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VIRGINIBUS  PUERISQUE 

AND  OTHER  PAPERS 


l/iu(/ior's  Edition\ 


^5$ 


VIRGINIBUS     PUERISQUE 

AND  OTHER  PAPERS 


BY 


ROBERT   LOUIS   STEVENSON 


'      «  Z  K 


,  ■>     "       •.»,'«  1,  ■>     " 


•  -i  3      3       ^      i         >  .    >   '        '        '      '  '       ' 


NEW   YORK 

CHARLES  SCRIBNER'S  SONS 

1 90 1 

\_Ail  rights  reserved'\ 


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My  dear  William  Ernest  Henley, 

We  are  all  busy  in  this  world  building 
Towers  of  Babel ;  and  the  child  of  our  imaginations 
is  always  a  changeling  when  it  comes  from  nurse. 
This  is  not  only  true  in  the  greatest,  as  of  wars  and 
folios,  but  in  the  least  also,  like  the  trifling  volume  in 
your  hand.  Thus  I  began  to  write  these  papers  with 
a  definite  end  :  I  was  to  be  the  Advocatus,  not  I  hope 
Diaboli,  but  Juventutis;  I  was  to  state  temperately 
the  beliefs  of  youth  as  opposed  to  the  contentions  of 
age  ;  to  go  over  all  the  field  where  the  two  differ,  and 
produce  at  last  a  little  volume  of  special  pleadings 
which  I  might  call,  without  misnomer.  Life  at  Twenty- 
five.  But  times  kept  changing,  and  I  shared  in  the 
change.  I  clung  hard  to  that  entrancing  age  ;  but, 
with  the  best  will,  no  man  can  be  twenty-five  for  ever. 
The  old,  ruddy  convictions  deserted  me,  and,  along 
with  them,  the  style  that  fits  their  presentation  and 
defence.  I  saw,  and  indeed  my  friends  informed  me, 
that  the  game  was  up.  A  good  part  of  the  volume 
would  answer  to  the  long-projected  title;  but  the 
shadows  of  the  prison-house  are  on  the  rest. 


vi  Dedication 

It  is  good  to  have  been  young  in  youth  and,  as 
years  go  on,  to  grow  older.  Many  are  already  old 
before  they  are  through  their  teens ;  but  to  travel 
deliberately  through  one's  ages  is  to  get  the  heart  out 
of  a  liberal  education.  Times  change,  opinions  vary 
to  their  opposite,  and  still  this  world  appears  a  brave 
gymnasium,  full  of  sea-bathing,  and  horse  exercise, 
and  bracing,  manly  virtues ;  and  what  can  be  more 
encouraging  than  to  find  the  friend  who  was  welcome 
at  one  age,  still  welcome  at  another  }  Our  affections 
and  beliefs  are  wiser  than  we ;  the  best  that  is  in  us 
is  better  than  we  can  understand ;  for  it  is  grounded 
beyond  experience,  and  guides  us,  blindfold  but  safe, 
from  one  age  on  to  another. 

These  papers  are  like  milestones  on  the  waysfde 
of  my  life ;  and  as  I  look  back  in  memory,  there  is 
hardly  a  stage  of  that  distance  but  I  see  you  present 
with  advice,  reproof,  or  praise.  Meanwhile,  many 
things  have  changed,  you  and  I  among  the  rest ;  but 
I  hope  that  our  sympathy,  founded  on  the  love  of  our 
art,  and  nourished  by  mutual  assistance,  shall  survive 
these  little  revolutions  undiminished,  and,  with  God's 
help,  unite  us  to  the  end. 

R.  L.  S. 
Davos  Platz,  i88i. 


CONTENTS 


"  ViRGINIBUS  PUERISQUE  " 

I. 

II.  .  .  '.^^.  ^1^^»^-^ 

\/   III.    On  Falling  in  Love  . 
I'  IV.    Truth  of  Intercourse 
«  Crabbed  Age  and  Youth 
f  An  Apology  for  Idlers    , 
Ordered  South 

V  ^s  Triplex       ;     •    . 

El  Dorado        .... 
The  English  Admirals     . 
'.'    Some  Portraits  by  Raeburn    . 
Child's  Play      .... 

V  Walking  Tours 

Pan's  Pipes        .... 

« 

A  Plea  for  Gas  Lamps    . 


./-^- 


I 

25 
44 
63 
81 
107 
128 

153 

172 

179. 

205 

222 
245 
262 
271 


0  [ATE  NORMAL  SCHOOL,    h^ 


«< 


VIRGINIBUS    PUERISQUE" 


"XIJT'ITH   the  single  exception  of  FalstafT, 

all  Shakespeare's  characters  are  what 

we  call  marrying  men.     Mercutio,  as  he  was 

own   cousin   to  Benedick  and  Biron,  would 

have  come  to  the  same  end  in  the  long  run. 

Even    lago    had    a   wife,   and,  what    is   far 

stranger,  he  was  jealous.     People  like  Jacques 

and    the    Fool    in    Lear,   although    we    can 

hardly  imagine  they  would  ever  marry,  kept 

single   out   of   a   cynical    humour    or   for    a 

broken  heart,  and  not,  as  we  do  nowadays, 

from  a  spirit  of  incredulity  and  preference 

for  the  single  state.      For  that  matter,  if  you 

turn  to  George  Sand's  French  version  of  As 

You  Like  It  (and  I  think  I  can  promise  you 

B 


2  ''Virginibus  Puerisque'^ 

will  like  it  but  little),  you  will  find  Jacque* 
marries  Celia  just  as  Orlando  marries  Rosalind 
At  least  there  seems  to  have  been  much 
less  hesitation  over  marriage  in  Shakespeare's 
days  ;  and  what  hesitation  there  was  was  3)f 
a  laughing  sort,  and  not  much  more  serious, 
one  way  or  the  other,  than  that  of  Pan  urge. 
In  modern  comedies  the  heroes  are  mostly 
of  Benedick's  way  of  thinking,  but  twice  as 
much  in  earnest,  and  not  one  quarter  so 
confident.  And  I  take  this  diffidence  as  a 
proof  of  how  sincere  their  terror  is.  They 
know  they  are  only  human  after  all  ;  they 
know  what  gins  and  pitfalls  lie  about  their 
feet ;  and  how  the  shadow  of  matrimony 
waits,  resolute  and  awful,  at  the  cross-roads. 
They  would  wish  to  keep  their  liberty  ;  but 
if  that  may  not  be,  why,  God's  will  be  done ! 
"  What,  are  you  afraid  of  marriage  ?"  asks 
Cecile,  in  Maitre  Gtierin.  "  Oh,  mon  Dieu, 
non  !"  replies  Arthur ;  "  I  should  take 
chloroform."  [They  look  forward  to  mar- 
riage much  in  the  same  way  as  they  prepare 
themselves  for  death :  each  seems  inevitable ; 


"  Virginibits  Ptterisque  "  3 

each  is  a  great  Perhaps,  and  a  leap  into  the 
dark,  for  which,  when  a  man  is  in  the  blue 
devils,  he  has  specially  to  harden  his  heart. 
That  splendid  scoundrel,  Maxime  de  Trailles, 
took  the  news  of  marriages  much  as  an  old 
man  hears  the  deaths  of  his  contemporaries. 
"  Cast  d^sesperant,"  he  cried,  throwing  him- 
self down  in  the  arm-chair  at  Madame 
Schontz's  ;  "  c'est  desesperant,  nous  nous 
marions  tous !"  Every  marriage  was  like 
another  gray  hair  on  his  head  ;  and  the  jolly 
church  bells  seemed  to  taunt  him  with  his 
fifty  years  and  fair  round  belly. 

The  fact  is,  we  are  much  more  afraid  of 
life  than  our  ancestors,  and  cannot  find  it  in 
our  hearts  either  to  marry  or  not  to  mairy. 
Marriage  is  terrifying,  but  so  is  a  cold  and 
forlorn  qld_^age.  The  friendships  of  men  are 
vastly  agreeable,  but  they  are  insecure.  You 
know  all  the  time  that  one  friend  will  marry 
and  put  you  to  the  door  ;  a  second  accept  a 
situation  in  China,  and  become  no  more  to 
you  than  a  name,  a  reminiscence,  and  an 
occasional  crossed    letter,  very  laborious   tc 


4  "  Virginibus  Ptierisque  " 

read  ;  a  third  will  take  up  with  some  religious 
crotchet  and  treat  you  to  sour  looks  thence- 
forward. So,  in  one  way  or  another,  life 
forces  men  apart  and  breaks  up  the  goodly 
fellowships  for  ever.  The  very  flexibility 
and  ease  which  make  men's  friendships  so 
agreeable  while  they  endure,  make  them  the 
easier  to  destroy  and  forget.  And  a  man 
who  has  a  few  friends,  or  one  who  has  a 
dozen  (if  there  be  any  one  so  wealthy  on  this 
earth),  cannot  forget  on  how  precarious  a 
base  his  happiness  reposes  ;  and  how  by  a 
stroke  or  two  of  fate — a  death,  a  few  light 
words,  a  piece  of  stamped  paper,  a  woman's 
bright  eyes — he  may  be  left,  in  a  month, 
destitute  of  all.  '  Marriage  is  certainly  a 
perilous  remedy,  instead  of  on  two  or  three, 
you  stake  your  happiness  on  one  life  only. 
But  still,  as  the  bargain  is  more  explicit  and 
complete  on  your  part,  it  is  more  so  on  the 
other  ;  and  you  have  not  to  fear  so  many 
contingencies  ;  it  is  not  every  wind  that  can 
blow  you  from  your  anchorage ;  and  so  long 
as  Death  withholds  his  sickle,  you  will  always 


« 


Virgmibus  Puerisqite  "  5 


have  a  friend  at  home.  People  who  share  a 
cell  in  the  Bastile,  or  are  thrown  together  on 
an  uninhabited  isle,  if  they  do  not  immedi- 
ately fall  to  fisticuffs,  will  find  some  possible 
ground  of  compromise.  They  will  learn  each 
other's  ways  and  humours,  so  as  to  know 
where  they  must  go  warily,  and  where  they 
may  lean  their  whole  weight.  The  discretion 
of  the  first  years  becomes  the  settled  habit  of 
the  last ;  and  so,  with  wisdom  and  patience, 
two  lives  may  grow  indissolubly  into  one. 

But  marriage,  if  comfortable,  is  not  at  all 
heroic.  It  certainly  narrows  and  damps  the 
spirits  of  generous  men.  In  marriage,  a  man 
becomes  slack  and  selfish,  and  undergoes  a 
fatty  degeneration  of  his  moral  being.  It  is 
not  only  when  Lydgate  misallies  himself  with 
Rosamond  Vincy,  but  when  Ladislaw  marries 
above  him  with  Dorothea,  that  this  may  be 
exemplified.  The  air  of  the  fireside  withers 
out  all  the  fine  wildings  of  the  husband's 
heart.  He  is  so  comfortable  and  happy  that 
he  begins  to  prefer  comfort  and  happiness  to 
everything  else  on  earth,  his  wife  included. 


6  "  Virginibus  Puerisque  " 

Yesterday  he  would  have  shared  his  last 
shilling ;  to-day  "  his  first  duty  is  to  his 
family,"  and  is  fulfilled  in  large  measure  by 
laying  down  vintages  and  husbanding  the 
health  of  an  invaluable  parent.  Twenty 
years  ago  this  man  was  equally  capable  of 
crime  or  heroism  ;  now  he  is  fit  for  neither. 
His  soul  is  asleep,  and  you  may  speak  with- 
out constraint ;  you  will  not  wake  him.  It 
is  not  for  nothing  that  Don  Quixote  was  a 
bachelor  and  Marcus  Aurelius  married  ill. 
For  women,  there  is  less  of  this  danger. 
Marriage  is  of  so  much  use  to  a  woman, 
opens  out  to  her  so  much  more  of  life,  and 
puts  her  in  the  way  of  so  much  more  freedom 
and  usefulness,  that,  whether  she  marry  ill 
or  well,  she  can  hardly  miss  some  benefit 
It  is  true,  however,  that  some  of  the  merriest 
and  most  genuine  of  women  are  old  maids ; 
and  that  those  old  maids,  and  wives  who  are 
unhappily  married,  have  often  most  of  the 
true  motherly  touch.  And  this  would  seem 
to  show,  even  for  women,  some  narrowing 
influence   in  comfortable  married   life.     But 


•'  Virginibus  Puerisque  "  J 

/ 
the  rule  is  none  the  less  certain  :  if  you  wish 

the  pick  of  men   and  women,  take  a  good 
bachelor  and  a  good  wife.  / 

I  am  often  filled  with  wonder  that  so 
many  marriages  are  passably  successful,  and 
so  few  come  to  open  failure,  the  more  so  as 
I  fail  to  understand  the  principle  on  which 
people  regulate  their  choice.  I  see  women 
marrying  indiscriminately  with  staring  bur- 
gesses and  ferret-faced,  white-eyed  boys,  and 
men  dwell  in  contentment  with  noisy  scullions, 
or  taking  into  their  lives  acidulous  vestals. 
It  is  a  common  answer  to  say  the  good 
people  marry  because  they  fall  in  love  ;  and 
of  course  you  may  use  and  misuse  a  word  as 
much  as  you  please,  if  you  have  the  world 
along  with  you.  But  love  is  at  least  a  some- 
what hyperbolical  expression  for  such  luke- 
warm preference.  It  is  not  here,  anyway,  that 
Love  employs  his  golden  shafts  ;  he  cannot 
be  said,  with  any  fitness  of  language,  to  reign 
here  and  revel.  Indeed,  if  this  be  love  at 
all,  it  is  plain  the  poets  have  been  fooling 
with  mankind  since  the   foundation    of  the 


8  '*  Virginibus  Puerisque  " 

world.  And  you  have  only  to  look  these 
happy  couples  in  the  face,  to  see  they  have 
never  been  in  love,  or  in  hate,  or  in  any 
other  high  passion,  all  their  days.  When 
you  see  a  dish  of  fruit  at  dessert,  you  some- 
times set  your  affections  upon  one  particular 
peach  or  nectarine,  watch  it  with  some  anxiety 
as  it  comes  round  the  table,  and  feel  quite  a 
sensible  disappointment  when  it  is  taken  by 
some  one  else.  I  have  used  the  phrase 
"  high  passion."  Well,  I  should  say  this  was 
about  as  high  a  passion  as  generally  leads  to 
marriage.  One  husband  hears  after  marriage 
that  some  poor  fellow  is  dying  of  his  wife's 
love.  "What  a  pity!"  he  exclaims;  "you 
know  I  could  so  easily  have  got  another!" 
And  yet  that  is  a  very  happy  union.  Or 
again  :  A  young  man  was  telling  me  the 
sweet  story  of  his  loves.  "  I  like  it  well 
enough  as  long  as  her  sisters  are  there,"  said 
this  amorous  swain ;  "  but  I  don't  know 
what  to  do  when  we're  alone."  Once  more : 
A  married  lady  was  debating  the  subject 
with  another  lady.     "You  know,  dear,"  said 


"  Virginibits  Puerisque  "  9 

the  first,  "  after  ten  years  of  marriage,  if  he 
is  nothing  else,  your  husband  is  always  an 
old  friend."  *'  I  have  many  old  friends,'' 
returned  the  other,  "  but  I  prefer  them  to  be 
nothing  more."  "  Oh,  perhaps  I  m\^\. prefer 
that  also!"  There  is  a  common  note  in 
these  three  illustrations  of  the  modern  idyll  ; 
and  it  must  be  owned  the  god  goes  among  us 
with  a  limping  gait  and  blear  eyes.  You 
wonder  whether  it  was  so  always  ;  whether 
desire  was  always  equally  dull  and  spiritless, 
and  possession  equally  cold.  I  cannot  help 
fancying  most  people  make,  ere  the)''  marry, 
some  such  table  of  recommendations  as 
Hannah  Godwin  wrote  to  her  brother  William 
anent  her  friend,  Miss  Gay.  It  is  so  charm- 
ingly comical,  and  so  pat  to  the  occasion, 
that  I  must  quote  a  few  phrases.  "The 
young  lady  is  in  every  sense  formed  to  make 
one  of  your  disposition  really  happy.  She 
has  a  pleasing  voice,  with  which  she  accom- 
panies her  musical  instrument  with  judgment. 
She  has  an  easy  politeness  in  her  manners, 
neither   free   nor    reserved.     She   is   a  good 


10  "  Virginibus  Puerisque  " 

housekeeper  and  a  good  economist,  and  yeJ 
of  a  generous  disposition.  As  to  her  internal 
accomplishments,  I  have  reason  to  speak  stiP 
more  highly  of  them  :  good  sense  without 
vanity,  a  penetrating  judgment  without  a 
disposition  to  satire,  with  about  as  much 
religion  as  my  William  likes,  struck  me  with 
a  wish  that  she  was  my  William's  wife." 
That  is  about  the  tune :  pleasing  voice, 
moderate  good  looks,  unimpeachable  internal 
accomplishments  after  the  style  of  the  copy- 
book, with  about  as  much  religion  as  my 
William  likes  ;  and  then,  with  all  speed,  to 
church. 

To  deal  plainly,  if  they  only  married  when 
they  fell  in  love,  most  people  would  die 
unwed  ;  and  among  the  others,  theie  would 
be  not  a  few  tumultuous  households.  The 
Lion  is  the  King  of  Beasts,  but  he  is  scarcely 
suitable   for  a  domestic  pet.      In   the   same 

r 

way,  I  suspect  love  is  rather  too  violent-'a 
passion  to  make,  in  all  cases,  a  good  domestic 
sentiment.  Like  other  violent  excitements, 
it  throws  up  not  only  what  is  best,  but  what 


'*  Virginibiis  Puerisque"  ii 

is  worst  and  smallest,  in  men's  characters. 
Just  as  some  people  are  malicious  in  drink, 
or  brawling  and  virulent  under  the  influence 
of  religious  feeling,  some  are  moody,  jealous, 
and  exacting  when  they  are  m  love,  who 
are  honest,  downright,  good -hearted  fellows 
enough  in  the  everyday  affairs  and  humours 
of  the  world. 

How  then,  seeing  we  are  driven  to  the 
hypothesis  that  people  choose  in  compara- 
tively cold  blood,  how  is  it  they  choose  so 
well  ?  ^Dne  is  almost  tempted  to  hint  that 
it  does  not  much  matter  whom  you  marry ; 
that,  in  fact,  marriage  is  a  subjective  affec- 
tion, and  if  you  have  made  up  your  mind  to 
it,  and  once  talked  yourself  fairly  over,  you 
could  "  pull  it  through  "  with  anybody.  But 
even  if  we  take  matrimony  at  its  lowest,  even 
if  we  regard  it  as  no  more  than  a  sort  of 
friendship  recognised  by  the  police,  there 
must  be  degrees  in  the  freedom  and  sym- 
pathy realised,  and  some  principle  to  guide 
simple  folk  in  their  selection.  Now  what 
should    this    principle    be?      Aie    there    no 


12  **  Virginibus  Puerisque  " 

more  definite  rules  than  are  to  be  found  in 
the  Prayer-book  ?  Law  and  religion  forbid 
the  bans  on  the  ground  of  propinquity  or 
consanguinity  ;  society  steps  in  to  separate 
classes  ;  and  in  all  this  most  critical  matter, 
has  common  sense,  has  wisdom,  never  a 
word  to  say  ?  In  the  absence  of  more 
magisterial  teaching,  let  us  talk  it  over 
between  friends  :  even  a  few  guesses  may  be 
of  interest  to  youths  and  maidens. 

In  all  that  concerns  eating  and  drinking, 
company,  climate,  and  ways  of  life,  com- 
munity of  taste  is  to  be  sought  for.  It 
would  be  trj'ing,  for  instance,  to  keep  bed 
and  board  with  an  early  riser  or  a  vegetarian. 
In  matters  of  art  and  intellect,  I  believe  it 
is  of  no  consequence.  Certainly  it  is  of 
none  in  the  companionships  of  men,  who 
will  dine  more  readily  with  one  who  has  a 
good  heart,  a  good  cellar,  and  a  humorous 
tongue,  than  with  another  who  shares  all 
their  favourite  hobbies  and  is  melancholy 
withal.  If  your  wife  likes  Tupper,  that  is 
no  reason  why  you  should  hang  your  head 


**  Virgi/iidtis  Puerisqiie  "  13 

She  thinks  with  the  majority,  and  has  the 
courage  of  her  opinions.  I  have  always 
suspected  public  taste  to  be  a  mongrel  pro- 
duct out  of  affectation  by  dogmatism  ;  and 
felt  sure,  if  you  could  only  find  an  honest 
man  of  no  special  literary  bent,  he  would  tell 
you  he  thought  much  of  Shakespeare  bom- 
bastic and  most  absurd,  and  all  of  him 
written  in  very  obscure  English  and  weari- 
some to  read.  And  not  long  ago  I  was 
able  to  lay  by  my  lantern  in  content,  for  I 
found  the  honest  man.  He  was  a  fellow  of 
parts,  quick,  humorous,  a  clever  painter,  and 
with  an  eye  for  certain  poetical  effects  of 
sea  and  ships.  I  am  not  much  of  a  judge 
of  that  kind  of  thing,  but  a  sketch  of  his 
comes  before  me  sometimes  at  night.  How 
strong,  supple,  and  living  the  ship  seems 
upon  the  billows !  With  what  a  dip  and 
rake  she  shears  the  flying  sea  1  I  cannot 
fancy  the  man  who  saw  this  effect,  and  took 
it  on  the  wing  with  so  much  force  and  spirit, 
was  what  you  call  commonplace  in  the  last 
recesses  of  the  heart.     And  yet  he  thought, 


14  "  Virginibus  Puerisque  '* 

and  was  not  ashamed  to  have  it  known  of 
him,  that  Ouida  was  better  in  every  way 
than  WilHam  Shakespeare.  If  there  were 
more  people  of  his  honesty,  this  would  be 
about  the  staple  of  lay  criticism.  It  is  not 
taste  that  is  plentiful,  but  courage  that  is 
rare.  And  what  have  we  in  place  ?  How 
many,  who  think  no  otherwise  than  the 
young  painter,  have  we  not  heard  disbursing 
second-hand  hyperboles  ?  Have  you  never 
turned  sick  at  heart,  O  best  of  critics !  when 
some  of  your  own  sweet  adjectives  were 
returned  on  you  before  a  gaping  audience  ? 
Enthusiasm  about  art  is  become  a  function 
of  the  average  female  being,  which  she  per- 
forms with  precision  and  a  sort  cf  haunting 
sprightliness,  like  an  ingenious  and  well- 
regulated  machine.  Sometimes,  alas !  the 
calmest  man  is  carried  away  in  the  torrent, 
bandies  adjectives  with  the  best,  and  out- 
Herods  Herod  for  some  shameful  moments. 
When  you  remember  that,  you  will  be 
tempted  to  put  things  strongly,  and  say  you 
will  marry  no  one  who  is  not  like  George 


"  Virginibus  Puerisque  "  15 

the  Second,  and  cannot  state  openly  a  dis- 
taste for  poetry  and  painting. 

The  word  "  facts  "  is,  in  some  ways,  crucial. 
I  have  spoken  with  Jesuits  and  Plymouth 
Brethren,  mathematicians  and  poets,  dogmatic 
republicans  and  dear  old  gentlemen  in  bird's- 
eye  neckcloths  ;  and  each  understood  the 
word  "  facts  "  in  an  occult  sense  of  his  own. 
Try  as  I  might,  I  could  get  no  nearer  the 
principle  of  their  division.  What  was  essen- 
tial to  them,  seemed  to  me  trivial  or  untrue. 
We  could  come  to  no  compromise  as  to 
what  was,  or  what  was  not,  important  in  the 
life  of  man.  Turn  as  we  pleased,  we  all 
stood  back  to  back  in  a  big  ring,  and  saw 
another  quarter  of  the  heavens,  with  different 
mountain-tops  along  the  sky-line  and  different 
constellations  overhead.  We  had  each  of  us 
some  whimsy  in  the  brain,  which  we  believed 
more  than  anything  else,  and  which  dis- 
coloured all  experience  to  its  own  shade. 
How  would  you  have  people  agree,  when 
one  is  deaf  and  the  other  blind  ?  Now  this 
is  \/here  there  should  be  community  between 


1 6  "  Virgin  ibus  Puerisque  " 

man  and  wife.  They  should  be  agreed  on 
their  catchword  in  ''facts  of  religion"  <y 
"facts  of  science*'  or  ^'society,  my  dear" ;  tol 
without  such  an  agreement  all  intercourse  is 
a  painful  strain  upon  the  mind.  "  About  as 
much  religion  as  my  William  likes,"  in  shoft, 
that  is  what  is  necessary  to  make  a  happy 
couple  of  any  William  and  his  spouse.  For 
there  are  differences  which  no  habit  nor 
affection  can  reconcile,  and  the  Bohemian 
must  not  intermarry  with  the  Pharisee. 
Imagine  Consuelo  as  Mrs.  Samuel  Budget, 
the  wife  of  the  successful  merchant !  The 
best  of  men  and  the  best  of  women  may 
sometimes  live  together  all  their  lives,  and, 
for  want  of  some  consent  on  fundamental 
questions,  hold  each  other  lost  spirits  to  the 
end. 

A  certain  sort  of  talent  is  almost  indis- 
pensable for  people  who  would  spend  years 
together  and  not  bore  themselves  to  death. 
But  the  talent,  like  the  agreement,  must  be 
for  and  about  life.  To  dwell  happily 
together,    they    should    be    versed     in    the 


"  Virginibus  Puerisque  "  17 

niceties  of  the  heart,  and  born  with  a  faculty 
for  willing^ compromise.  The  woman  must 
be  talented  as  a  woman,  and  it  will  not 
much  matter  although  she  is  talented  in 
nothing  else.  She  must  know  her  mitier  d& 
femme^  and  have  a  fine  touch  for  the  affec- 
tions. And  it  is  more  important  that  a 
person  should  be  a  good  gossip,  and  talk 
pleasantly  and  smartly  of  common  friends 
and  the  thousand  and  one  nothings  of  the 
day  and  hour,  than  that  she  should  speak 
with  the  tongues  of  men  and  angels  ;  for  a 
while  together  by  the  fire,  happens  more 
frequently  in  marriage  than  the  presence  of 
a  distinguished  foreigner  to  dinner.  That 
people  should  laugh  over  the  same  sort  of 
jests,  and  have  many  a  story  of  "  grouse  in 
the  gun-room,"  many  an  old  joke  between 
them  which  time  cannot  wither  nor  custom 
stale,  is  a  better  preparation  for  life,  by  your 
leave,  than  many  other  things  higher  and 
better  sounding  in  the  world's  ears.  You 
could  read  Kant  by  yourself,  if  yo:i  wanted  ; 
but  you  must  share  a  joke  witn  some  one 


1 8  "  VirginibiLs  Puerisque  " 

else.  You  can  forgive  people  who  do  not 
follow  you  through  a  philosophical  disquisi- 
tion ;  but  to  find  your  wife  laughing  when 
you  had  tears  in  your  eyes,  or  staring  when 
you  were  in  a  fit  of  laughter,  would  go  some 
way  towards  a  dissolution  of  the  marriage. 

I  know  a  woman  who,  from  some  distaste 
or  disability,  could  never  so  much  as  under- 
stand the  meaning  of  the  word  politics,  and 
has  given  up  trying  to  distinguish  Whigs 
from  Tories  ;  but  take  her  on  her  own 
politics,  ask  her  about  other  men  or  women 
and  the  chicanery  of  everyday  existence — 
the  rubs,  the  tricks,  the  vanities  on  which 
life  turns — and  you  will  not  find  many  more 
shrewd,  trenchant,  and  humorous.  Nay,  to 
make  plainer  what  I  have  in  mind,  this  same 
woman  has  a  share  of  the  higher  and  more 
poetical  understanding,  frank  interest  in 
things  for  their  own  sake,  and  enduring 
astonishment  at  the  most  common.  She  i.s 
not  to  be  deceived  by  custom,  or  made  to 
think  a  mystery  solved  when  it  is  repeated. 
I  have  heard  her  say  she  could  wonder  her- 


"Virgimbus  Puerisque^*  19 

self  crazy  over  the  human  eyebrow.  Now 
in  a  world  where  most  of  us  walk  very  con- 
tentedly in  the  little  lit  circle  of  their  own 
reason,  and  have  to  be  reminded  of  what  lies 
without  by  specious  and  clamant  exceptions 
— earthquakes,  eruptions  of  Vesuvius,  banjos 
floating  in  mid-air  at  a  se'ajice,  and  the  like 
— a  mind  so  fresh  and  unsophisticated  is  no 
despicable  gift.  I  will  own  I  think  it  a 
better  sort  of  mind  than  goes  necessarily 
with  the  clearest  views  on  public  business 
It  will  wash.  It  will  find  something  to  say 
at  an  odd  moment.  It  has  in  it  the  spring 
of  pleasant  and  quaint  fancies.  Whereas  I 
can  imagine  myself  yawning  all  night  long 
until  my  jaws  ached  and  the  tears  came  into 
my  eyes,  although  my  companion  on  the 
other  side  of  the  hearth  held  the  most  en- 
lightened opinions  on  the  franchise  or  the 
ballot. 

The  question  of  professions,  in  as  far  as 
they  regard  marriage,  was  only  interesting 
to  women  until  of  late  days,  but  it  touches 
all  of  us  now.      Certainly,  if  I  could  help  it, 


20  "  Virgmibus  Puerisque  " 

I  would  never  marry  a  wife  who  wrote 
The  practice  of  letters  is  miserably  harassing 
to  the  mind  ;  and  after  an  hour  or  two's 
work,  all  the  more  human  portion  of  the 
author  is  extinct ;  he  will  bully,  backbite, 
and  speak  daggers.  Music,  I  hear,  is  not 
much  better.  But  painting,  on  the  contrary, 
is  often  highly  sedative  ;  because  so  much 
of  the  labour  after  your  picture  is  once 
begun,  is  almost  entirely  manual,  and  of  that 
skilled  sort  of  manual  labour  which  offers  a 
continual  series  of  successes,  and  so  tickles 
a  man,  through  his  vanity,  into  good  humour. 
Alas !  in  letters  there  is  nothing  of  this  sort. 
You  may  write  as  beautiful  a  hand  as  you 
will,  you  have  always  something  else  to  think 
of,  and  cannot  pause  to  notice  your  loops 
and  flourishes ;  they  are  beside  the  mark, 
and  the  first  law  stationer  could  put  you  to 
the  blush.  Rousseau,  indeed,  made  some 
account  of  penmanship,  even  made  it  a 
source  of  livelihood,  when  he  copied  out  the 
Hdo'ise  for  dilettante  ladies  ;  and  therein 
showed  that  strange  eccentric  prudence  which 


"  Virgmibus  Puerisque  "  21 

guided  him  among  so  many  thousand  folh'es 
and  insanities.  It  M^ould  be  well  for  all  of 
the  genus  irritabile  thus  to  add  something  of 
skilled  labour  to  intangible  brain-work.  To 
find  the  right  word  is  so  doubtful  a  success 
and  lies  so  near  to  failure,  that  there  is  no 
satisfaction  in  a  year  of  it ;  but  we  all  know 
when  we  have  formed  a  letter  perfectly ; 
and  a  stupid  artist,  right  or  wrong,  is  almost 
equally  certain  he  has  found  a  right  tone  or 
a  right  colour,  or  made  a  dexterous  stroke 
with  his  brush.  And,  again,  painters  may 
work  out  of  doors  ;  and  the  fresh  air,  the 
deliberate  seasons,  and  the  "  tranquillising 
influence  "  of  the  green  earth,  counterbalance 
the  fever  of  thought,  and  keep  them  cool, 
placable,  and  prosaic. 

A  ship  captain  is  a  good  man  to  marry  if 
it  is  a  marriage  of  love,  for  absences  are  a 
good  influence  in  love  and  keep  it  bright 
and  delicate ;  but  he  is  just  the  worst 
man  if  the  feeling  is  more  pedestrian,  as 
Wbit  is  too  frequently  torn  open  and  the 
solder  has  never  time  to  set.      Men  who  fish, 


2  2  "  Virginibus  Puerisque  " 

botanise,  work  with  the  turning-lathe,  or 
gather  sea-weeds,  will  make  admirable  hus- 
bands ;  and  a  little  amateur  painting  in 
water-colour  shows  the  innocent  and  quiet 
mind.  Those  who  have  a  few  intimates  are 
to  be  avoided  ;  while  those  who  swim  loose, 
who  have  their  hat  in  their  hand  all  along 
the  street,  who  can  number  an  infinity  of 
acquaintances  and  are  not  chargeable  with 
any  one  friend,  promise  an  easy  disposition 
and  no  rival  to  the  wife's  influence.  I  will 
not  say  they  are  the  best  of  men,  but  they 
are  the  stuff  out  of  which  adroit  and  capable 
women  manufacture  the  best  of  husbands. 
It  is  to  be  noticed  that  those  who  have  loved 
once  or  twice  already  are  so  much  the  better 
educated  to  a  woman's  hand  ;  the  bright  boy 
of  fiction  is  an  odd  and  most  uncomfortable 
mixture  of  shyness  and  coarseness,  and  needs 
a  deal  of  civilising.  Lastly  (and  this  i.s, 
perhaps,  the  golden  rule),  no  woman  should 
marry  a  teetotaller,  or  a  man  who  does  not 
smoke.  It  is  not  for  nothing  that  this 
**  ignoble  tabagie,"  as  Michelet  calls  it,  spreads^ 


**  Virginibus  Puerisque  "  23 

over  all  the  world.  Michelet  rails  against 
it  because  it  renders  you  happy  apart  from 
thought  or  work  ;  to  provident  women  this 
will  seem  no  evil  influence  in  married  life. 
Whatever  keeps  a  man  in  the  front  garden, 
whatever  checks  wandering  fancy  and  all 
inordinate  ambition,  whatever  makes  for 
lounging  and  contentment,  makes  just  sc 
surely  for  domestic  happiness. 

These  notes,  if  they  amuse  the  reader  at 
all,  will  probably  amuse  him  more  when  he 
differs  than  when  he  agrees  with  them  ;  at 
least  they  will  do  no  harm,  for  nobody  will 
follow  my  advice.  But  the  last  word  is  of 
more  concern.  Marriage  is  a  step  so  grave 
and  decisive  that  it  attracts  light-headed, 
variable  men  by  its  very  awfulness.  They 
have  been  so  tried  among  the  inconstant 
squalls  and  currents,  so  often  sailed  for 
islands  in  the  air  or  lain  becalmed  with 
burning  heart,  that  they  will  risk  all  for  solid 
ground  below  their  feet.  Desperate  pilots, 
they  run  their  sea-sick,  weary  bark  upon  tlic 
dashing  rocks.      It  seems  as  if  marriage  were 


'i^minALSCii^^^ 


24  *'  Virginibus  Puerisque  ' 

the  royal  road  through  life,  and  realised,  on 
the  instant,  what  we  have  all  dreamed  on 
summer  Sundays  when  the  bells  ring,  or  at 
night  when  we  cannot  sleep  for  the  desire  of 
living.  They  think  it  will  sober  and  change 
them.  Like  those  who  join  a  brotherhood, 
they  fancy  it  needs  but  an  act  to  be  out  of 
the  coil  and  clamour  for  ever.  But  this 
is  a  wile  of  the  devil's.  To  the  end,  spring 
winds  will  sow  disquietude,  passing  faces 
leave  a  regret  behind  them,  and  the  whole 
world  keep  calling  and  calling  in  their  ears. 
For  marriage  is  like  life  in  this — that  it  is  « 
field  of  battle,  and  not  a  bed  of  rosea. 


C5 


Vir^inibus  Fueruqzie  "  25 


II 

HOPK,  they  say,  deserts  us  at  no  period  of 

our  existence.  From  first  to  last,  and  in  the 
face  of  smarting  disillusions,  we  continue  to 
expect  good  fortune,  better  health,  and  better 
conduct ;  and  that  so  confidently,  that  we 
judge  it  needless  to  deserve  them.  I  think 
it  improbable  that  I  shall  ever  write  like 
Shakespeare,  conduct  an  army  like  Hannibal, 
or  distinguish  myself  like  Marcus  Aurelius  in 
the  paths  of  virtue  ;  and  yet  I  have  my  by- 
days,  hope  prompting,  when  I  am  very  ready 
to  believe  that  I  shall  combine  all  these 
various  excellences  in  my  own  person,  and 
go  marching  down  to  posterity  with  divine 
honours.  There  is  nothing  so  monstrous  but 
we  can  believe  it  of  ourselves.  About  our- 
selves, about  our  aspirations  and  delinquencies, 


26  '* Vir^inibus  Puerisque** 

we  have  dwelt  by  choice  in  a  delicious  vague* 
ness  from  our  boyhood  up.  No  one  will 
have  forgotten  Tom  Sawyer's  aspiration : 
**  Ah,  if  he  could  only  die  temporarily  /" 
Or,  perhaps,  better  still,  the  inward  resolution 
of  the  two  pirates,  that  "  so  long  as  they 
remained  in  that  business,  their  piracies 
should  not  again  be  sullied  with  the  crime  of 
stealing."  Here  we  recognise  the  thoughts 
of  our  boyhood  ;  and  our  boyhood  ceased — 
well,  when  ? — not,  I  think,  at  twenty  ;  nor 
perhaps,  altogether  at  twenty-five  ;  nor  yet 
at  thirty  ;  and  possibly,  to  be  quite  frank,  we 
are  still  in  the  thick  of  that  arcadian  period 
For  as  the  race  of  man,  after  centuries  of 
civilisation,  still  keeps  some  traits  of  their 
barbarian  fathers,  so  man  the  individual  is 
not  altogether  quit  of  youth,  when  he  is 
already  old  and  honoured,  and  Lord  Chan- 
cellor of  England.  We  advance  in  years 
somewhat  in  the  manner  of  an  invading 
army  in  a  barren  land  ;  the  age  that  we  have 
reached,  as  the  phrase  goes,  we  but  hold 
with   an   outpost,   and   still   keep   open   oui 


•*  Viigiuibus  Puerisque  "  27 

communications  with  the  extreme  rear  and 
first  beginnings  of  the  march.  There  is  our 
true  base ;  that  is  not  only  the  beginning, 
but  the  perennial  spring  of  our  faculties  ;  and 
grandfather  William  can  retire  upon  occasion 
into  the  green  enchanted  forest  of  his  boy- 
hood. 

The  unfading  boyishness  of  hope  and  its 
vigorous  irrationality  are  nowhere  better  dis- 
played than  in  questions  of  conduct.  There 
is  a  character  in  the  Pilgrim's  Progress,  one 
Mr.  Linger-after- Lust  with  whom  I  fancy  we 
are  all  on  speaking  terms  ;  one  famous  among 
the  famous  for  ingenuity  of  hope  up  to  and 
beyond  the  moment  of  defeat  ;  one  who, 
after  eighty  years  of  contrary  experience,  will 
believe  it  possible  to  continue  in  the  business 
of  piracy  and  yet  avoid  the  guilt  of  theft 
Every  sin  is  our  last  ;  every  ist  of  January 
a  remarkable  turning-point  in  our  career. 
Any  overt  act,  above  all,  is  felt  to  be  alchemic 
in  its  power  to  change.  A  drunkard  takes 
the  pledge  ;  it  will  be  strange  if  that  does 
not  help  him.      For  how  many  years  did  Mr. 


2  8  *' Virgiuidus  Ptcerisgue*' 

Pepys  continue  to  make  and  break  his  little 
vows?  And  yet  I  have  not  heard  that  he 
was  discouraged  in  the  end.  By  such  steps 
we  think  to  fix  a  momentary  resolution  ;  as 
a  timid  fellow  hies  him  to  the  dentist's  while 
the  tooth  is  stinging. 

But,  alas,  by  planting  a  stake  at  the  top 
of  flood,  you  can  neither  prevent  nor  delay 
the  inevitable  ebb.  There  is  no  hocus-pocus 
in  morality ;  and  even  the  "  sanctimonious 
ceremony  "  of  marriage  leaves  the  man  un- 
changed. This  is  a  hard  saying,  and  has  an 
air  of  paradox.  For  there  is  something  in 
marriage  so  natural  and  inviting,  that  the 
step  has  an  air  of  great  simplicity  and  ease  ; 
it  offers  to  bury  for  ever  many  aching  pre- 
occupations ;  it  is  to  afford  us  unfailing  and 
familiar  company  through  life  ;  it  opens  up  a 
smiling  prospect  of  the  blest  and  passive  kind 
of  love,  rather  than  the  blessing  and  active  ; 
it  is  approached  not  only  through  the  delights 
of  courtship,  but  by  a  public  performance 
and  repeated  legal  signatures.  A  man 
naturally  thinks  it  will  go  hard  with  him   i/ 


^'Virginibus  Puerisqtie''  29 

he  cannot  be  good  and  fortunate  and  happy 
within  such  august  circumvallations. 

And  yet  there  is  probably  no  other  act  in 
a  man's  life  so  hot-headed  and  foolhardy  as 
this  one  of  marriage.  For  years,  let  us 
suppose,  you  have  been  making  the  most 
indifferent  business  of  your  career.  Your  ex- 
perience has  not,  we  may  dare  to  say,  been 
more  encouraging  than  Paul's  or  Horace's  ; 
like  them,  you  have  seen  and  desired  the  good 
that  you  were  not  able  to  accomplish  ;  like 
them,  you  have  done  the  evil  that  you 
loathed.  You  have  waked  at  night  in  a  hot 
or  a  cold  sweat,  according  to  your  habit  of 
body,  remembering,  with  dismal  surprise, 
your  own  unpardonable  acts  and  sayings. 
You  have  been  sometimes  tempted  to  with- 
draw entirely  from  this  game  of  life  ;  as  a 
man  who  makes  nothing  but  misses  with- 
draws from  that  less  dangerous  one  of  billiards. 
You  have  fallen  back  upon  the  thought  that 
you  yourself  most  sharply  smarted  for  yout 
misdemeanours,  or,  in  the  old,  plaintive  phrase, 
that  you  were  nobody's  enemy  but  your  own. 


30  "  Virginibus  Puerisque  " 

And  then  you  have  been  made  aware  of 
what  was  beautiful  and  amiable,  wise  and 
kind,  in  the  other  part  of  your  behaviour  ; 
and  it  seemed  as  if  nothing  could  reconcile 
the  contradiction,  as  indeed  nothing  can.  If 
you  are  a  man,  you  have  shut  your  mouth 
hard  and  said  nothing  ;  and  if  you  are  only 
a  man  in  the  making,  you  have  recognised 
that  yours  was  quite  a  special  case,  and  you 
yourself  not  guilty  of  your  own  pestiferous 
career. 

Granted,  and  with  all  my  heart.  Let  us 
accept  these  apologies  ;  let  us  agree  that  you 
are  nobody's  enemy  but  your  own  ;  let  us 
agree  that  you  are  a  sort  of  moral  cripple, 
impotent  for  good  ;  and  let  us  regard  you 
with  the  unmingled  pity  due  to  such  a  fate. 
But  there  is  one  thing  to  which,  on  these 
terms,  we  can  never  agree : — we  can  never 
agree  to  have  you  marry.  What!  you  have 
had  one  life  to  manage,  and  have  failed  so 
strangely,  and  now  can  see  nothing  wiser 
than  to  conjoin  with  it  the  management  of 
some   one  else's  ?     Because  you  have  been 


"  Virgmibus  Puerisque  "  31 

unfaithful  in  a  very  little,  you  propose  your' 
self  to  be  a  ruler  over  ten  cities.  You  strip 
yourself  by  such  a  step  of  all  remaining  con- 
solations and  excuses.  You  are  no  longer 
content  to  be  your  own  enemy  ;  you  must  be 
your  wife's  also.  You  have  been  hitherto  in 
a  mere  subaltern  attitude :  dealing-  cruel 
blows  about  you  in  life,  yet  only  half  respon- 
sible, since  you  came  there  by  no  choice  or 
movement  of  your  own.  Now,  it  appears, 
you  must  take  things  on  your  own  authority: 
God  made  you,  but  you  marry  yourself;  and 
for  all  that  your  wife  suffers,  no  one  is  respon- 
sible but  you.  A  man  must  be  very  certain 
of  his  knowledge  ere  he  undertake  to  guide 
a  ticket-of-leave  man  through  a  dangerous 
pass  ;  you  have  eternally  missed  your  way  in 
life,  with  consequences  that  you  still  deplore, 
and  yet  you  masterfully  seize  your  wife's 
hand,  and,  blindfold,  drag  her  after  you  to 
ruin.  And  it  is  your  wife,  you  observe, 
whom  you  select.  She,  whose  happiness  you 
most  desire,  you  choose  to  be  your  victim. 
You  would  earnestly  warn  her  from  a  totter- 


32  ^^Virginibiis  Puerisque" 

ing  bridge  or  bad  investment.  If  she  were 
to  marry  some  one  else,  how  you  would 
tremble  for  her  fate !  If  she  were  only  your 
sister,  and  you  thought  half  as  much  of  her, 
how  doubtfully  would  you  entrust  her  future 
to  a  man  no  better  than  yourself! 

Times  are  changed  with  him  who  marries; 
there  are  no  more  by-path  meadows,  where 
you  may  innocently  linger,  but  the  road  lies 
long  and  straight  and  dusty  to  the  grave. 
Idleness,  which  is  often  becoming  and  even 
wise  in  the  bachelor,  begins  to  wear  a  differ- 
ent aspect  when  you  have  a  wife  to  support. 
Suppose,  after  you  are  married,  one  of  those 
little  slips  were  to  befall  you.  What  happened 
last  November  might  surely  happen  February 
next.  They  may  have  annoyed  you  at  the 
time,  because  they  were  not  what  you  had 
meant ;  but  how  will  they  annoy  you  in  the 
future,  and  how  will  they  shake  the  fabric  of 
your  wife's  confidence  and  peace  !  A  thou- 
sand things  unpleasing  went  on  in  the  chiar- 
oscuro of  a  life  that  you  shrank  from  too 
particularly  realising ;  you  did  not  care,  in 


*  *  Virginibus  Puerisque  "  33 

those  days,  to  make  a  fetish  of  your  con- 
science ;  you  would  recognise   your  fc.ilures 
with  a  nod,  and  so,  good  day.      But  the  time 
for  these  reserves  is  over.     You  have  wilfully 
introduced  a  witness  into  your  life,  the  scene 
of  these  defeats,  and  can  no  longer  close  the 
mind's    eye    upon    uncomely    passages,    but 
must  stand  up  straight  and  put  a  name  upon 
your  actions.      And  your  witness  is  not  only 
the  judge,  but  the  victim  of  your  sins  ;  not 
only  can  she  condemn  you  to  the  sharpest 
penalties,  but  she  must  herself  share  feelingly 
in  their  endurance.      And  observe,  once  more, 
with  what  temerity  you  have  chosen  precisely 
her  to  be  your  spy,  whose  esteem  you  value 
highest,  and  whom  you  have  already  taught 
to  think  you  better  than  you  are.     You  may 
think  you  had  a  conscience,  and   believed  in 
God  ;  but  what   is   a  conscience  to  a  wife  ? 
Wise  men  of  yore  erected  statues  of  their 
deities,  and  consciously  performed  their  part 
in    life   before   those    marble   eyes,     A   god 
watched    them  at  the  board,  and  stood  by 

their    bedside    in    the    morning   when    they 

D 


34  **  Virginibus  Puerisque  " 

woke ;  and  all  about  their  ancient  cities, 
where  they  bought  and  sold,  or  where  they 
piped  and  wrestled,  there  would  stand  some 
symbol  of  the  things  that  are  outside  of  man. 
These  were  lessons,  delivered  in  the  quiet 
dialect  of  art,  which  told  their  story  faithfully, 
but  gently.  It  is  the  same  lesson,  if  you 
will — but  how  harrowingly  taught! — when 
the  woman  you  respect  shall  weep  from  your 
unkindness  or  blush  with  shame  at  your  mis- 
conduct. Poor  girls  in  Italy  turn  their 
painted  Madonnas  to  the  wall :  you  cannot 
set  aside  your  wife.  To  marry  is  to  domes- 
ticate the  Recording  Angel.  Once  you  are 
married,  there  is  nothing  left  for  you,  not 
even  suicide,  but  to  be  good. 

And  goodness  in  marriage  is  a  more 
intricate  problem  than  mere  single  virtue  ; 
for  in  marriage  there  are  two  ideals  to  be 
realised.  A  girl,  it  is  true,  has  always  lived 
in  a  glass  house  among  reproving  relatives, 
whose  word  was  law  ;  she  has  been  bred  up 
to  sacrifice  her  judgments  and  take  the  key 
submissively  from  dear  papa  ;  and  it  is  won* 


' '  Virginibus  Puerisque  "  35 

derful  how  swiftly  she  can  change  her  tune 
into  the  husband's.      Her  morality  has  been, 
too  often,  an  affair  of  precept  and  conformity. 
But    in    the   case   of   a    bachelor    who    has 
enjoyed  some  measure  both  of  privacy  and 
freedom,    his    moral    judgments    have    been 
passed  in  some  accordance  with  his  nature. 
His  sins  were  always  sins  in   his  own  sight  ; 
he  could  then  only  sin  when   he  did  some 
act  against  his   clear  conviction  ;   the   light 
that  he  walked  by  was  obscure,  but  it  was 
single.      Now,  when  two  people  of  any  grit 
and  spirit  put  their  fortunes  into  one,  there 
succeeds  to  this  comparative  certainty  a  huge 
welter    of   competing    jurisdictions.       It   no 
longer  matters  so  much  how  life  appears  to 
one ;    one  must  consult  another :    one,  who 
may  be  strong,  must  not  offend  the  other, 
who  is  weak.     The  only  weak  brother  I  am 
willing   to  consider  is  (to  make  a  bull   for 
once)  my  wife.      For  her,  and  for  her  only,  I 
must  waive  my  righteous  judgments,  and  go 
crookedly   about    my    life.       How,    then,    in 
such  an  atmosphere  of  compromise,  to  keep 


36  "  Virginibus  Piierisque  " 

honour  bright  and  abstain  from  base  capitu« 
lations  ?  How  are  you  to  put  aside  love's 
pleadings  ?  How  are  you,  the  apostle  of 
laxity,  to  turn  suddenly  about  into  the  rabbi 
of  precision  ;  and  after  these  years  of  ragged 
practice,  pose  for  a  hero  to  the  lackey  who 
has  found  you  out  ?  In  this  temptation  to 
mutual  indulgence  lies  the  particular  peril  to 
morality  in  married  life.  Daily  they  drop  a 
■  little  lower  from  the  first  ideal,  and  for  a 
while  continue  to  accept  these  changelings 
with  a  gross  complacency.  At  last  Love 
wakes  and  looks  about  him  ;  finds  his  hero 
sunk  into  a  stout  old  brute,  intent  on  brandy 
pawnee  ;  finds  his  heroine  divested  of  her 
angel  brightness ;  and  in  the  flash  of  that 
first  disenchantment,  flees  for  ever. 

Again,  the  husband,  in  these  unions,  is 
usually  a  man,  and  the  wife  commonly 
enough  a  woman  ;  and  when  this  is  the  case, 
although  it  makes  the  firmer  marriage,  a 
thick  additional  veil  of  misconception  hangs 
above  the  doubtful  business.  Women,  I 
believe,  are  somewhat  rarer  than  men  ;  but 


"  Virginibus  Ptterisque  "  37 

then,  if  I  were  a  woman  myself,  I  daresay  I 
should  hold  the  reverse  ;  and  at  least  we  all 
enter  more  or  less  wholly  into  one  or  other 
of  these  camps.  A  man  who  delights 
women  by  his  feminine  perceptions  will 
often  scatter  his  admirers  by  a  chance 
explosion  of  the  under  side  of  m.an  ;  and  the 
most  masculine  and  direct  of  women  will 
some  day,  to  your  dire  surprise,  draw  out 
like  a  telescope  into  successive  lengths  of 
personation.  Alas !  for  the  man,  knowing 
her  to  be  at  heart  more  candid  than  himself, 
who  shall  flounder,  panting,  through  these 
mazes  in  the  quest  for  truth.  The  proper 
qualities  of  each  sex  are,  indeed,  eternally 
surpiising  to  the  other.  Between  the  Latin 
and  the  Teuton  races  there  are  similar  diver- 
gences, not  to  be  bridged  by  the  most  liberal 
sympathy.  And  in  the  good,  plain,  cut-and- 
&cy  explanations  of  this  life,  which  pass 
current  among  us  as  the  wisdom  of  the 
elders,  this  difficulty  has  been  turned  with 
the  aid  of  pious  lies.  Thus,  when  a  young 
lady  has    angelic    features,  eats   nothing   to 


38  **Virginibus  Puerisque" 

speak  of,  plays  all  day  long  on  the  piano, 
and  sings  ravishingly  in  church,  it  requires 
a  rough  infidelity,  falsely  called  cynicism,  to 
believe  that  she  may  be  a  little  devil  after 
all.  Yet  so  it  is  :  she  may  be  a  tale-bearer, 
a  liar,  and  a  thief;  she  may  have  a  taste  for 
brandy,  and  no  heart.  My  compliments  to 
George  Eliot  for  her  Rosamond  Vincy ;  the 
ugly  work  of  satire  she  has  transmuted  to 
the  ends  of  art,  by  the  companion  figure  of 
Lydgate  ;  and  the  satire  was  much  wanted 
for  the  education  of  young  men.  That 
doctrine  of  the  excellence  of  women,  however 
chivalrous,  is  cowardly  as  well  as  false.  It 
is  better  to  face  the  fact,  and  know,  when 
you  marry,  that  you  take  into  your  life  a 
creature  of  equal,  if  of  unlike,  frailties  ;  whose 
weak  human  heart  beats  no  more  tunefully 
than  yours. 

But  it  is  the  object  of  a  liberal  education 
not  only  to  obscure  the  knowledge  of  one 
sex  by  another,  but  to  magnify  the  natural 
differences  between  the  two.  Man  is  a 
creature  who  lives  not  upon  bread  alone,  but 


**Virginibus  Ptierisque^*  39 

principally  by  catchwords ;  and  the  little  rift 
between  the  sexes  is  astonishingly  widened 
by  simply  teaching  one  set  of  catchwords  to 
the  girls  and  another  to  the  boys.  To  the 
first,  there  is  shown  but  a  very  small  field  ol 
experience,  and  taught  a  veiy  trenchant 
principle  for  judgment  and  action  ;  to  the 
other,  the  world  of  life  is  more  largely  dis- 
played, and  their  rule  of  conduct  is  propor- 
tionally widened.  They  are  taught  to  follow 
different  virtues,  to  hate  different  vices,  to 
place  their  ideal,  even  for  each  other,  in 
different  achievements.  What  should  be  the 
result  of  such  a  course  ?  When  a  horse  has 
run  away,  and  the  two  flustered  people  in 
the  gig  have  each  possessed  themselves  of  a 
rein,  we  know  the  end  of  that  conveyance 
will  be  in  the  ditch.  So,  when  I  see  a  raw 
youth  and  a  green  girl,  fluted  and  fiddled  in 
a  dancing  measure  into  that  most  serious 
contract,  and  setting  out  upon  life's  journey 
with  ideas  so  monstrously  divergent,  I  am 
not  surprised  that  some  make  shipwreck,  but 
that  any  come  to  port.     What  the  boy  does 


40  **  Virginibus  Puerisque  " 

almost  proudly,  as  a  manly  peccadillo,  the 
girl  will  shudder  at  as  a  debasing  vice  ;  what 
is  to  her  the  mere  common  sense  of  tactics, 
he  will  spit  out  of  his  mouth  as  shameful. 
Through  such  a  sea  of  contrarieties  must  this 
green  couple  steer  their  way  ;  and  contrive 
to  love  each  other  ;  and  to  respect,  forsooth  ; 
and  be  ready,  when  the  time  arrives,  to 
educate  the  little  men  and  women  who  shall 
succeed  to  their  places  and  perplexities. 

And  yet,  when  all  has  been  said,  the  man 
who  should  hold  back  from  marriage  is  in 
the  same  case  with  him  who  runs  away  from 
battle.  To  avoid  an  occasion  for  our  virtues 
is  a  worse  degree  of  failure  than  to  push 
forward  pluckily  and  make  a  fall.  It  is 
lawful  to  pray  God  that  we  be  not  led  into 
temptation  ;  but  not  lawful  to  skulk  from 
those  that  come  to  us.  The  noblest  passage 
in  one  of  the  noblest  books  of  this  century, 
is  where  the  old  pope  glories  in  the  trial,  nay, 
in  the  partial  fall  and  but  imperfect  triumph, 
of  the  younger  hero.^  Without  some  such 
^  Browning's  Ring  and  Book, 


"  Virginibtis  Puerisque  "  41 

manly  note,  it  were  perhaps  better  to  have 
no  conscience  at  all.  But  there  is  a  vast 
difference  between  teaching  flight,  and  show- 
ing points  of  peril  that  a  man  may  march 
the  more  warily.  And  the  true  conclusion 
of  this  paper  is  to  turn  our  back  on  appre- 
hensions, and  embrace  that  shining  and 
courageous  virtue,  Faith.  Hope  is  the  boy, 
a  blind,  headlong,  pleasant  fellow,  good  to 
chase  swallows  with  the  salt ;  Faith  is  the 
grave,  experienced,  yet  smiling  man.  Hope 
lives  on  ignorance  ;  open-eyed  Faith  is  built 
upon  a  knowledge  of  our  life,  of  the  tyranny 
of  circumstance  and  the  frailty  of  human 
resolution.  Hope  looks  for  unqualified 
success  ;  but  Faith  counts  certainly  on 
failure,  and  takes  honourable  defeat  to  be  a 
form  of  victory.  Hope  is  a  kind  old  pagan  ; 
but  Faith  grew  up  in  Christian  days,  and 
early  learnt  humility.  In  the  one  temper,  a 
man  is  indignant  that  he  cannot  spring  up 
in  a  clap  to  heights  of  elegance  and  virtue  ; 
in  the  other,  out  of  a  sense  of  his  infirmities, 
he  is  filled  with  confidence  because  a  year 


42  *•  Virginibus  Puerisque  " 

has  come  and  gone,  and  he  has  still  preserved 
some  rags  of  honour.  In  the  first,  he  expects 
an  angel  for  a  wife  ;  in  the  last,  he  knows 
that  she  is  like  himself — erring,  thoughtless, 
and  untrue  ;  but  like  himself  also,  filled  with 
a  struggling  radiancy  of  better  things,  and 
adorned  with  ineffective  qualities.  You  may 
safely  go  to  school  with  hope  ;  but  ere  you 
marry,  should  have  learned  the  mingled 
lesson  of  the  world  :  that  dolls  are  stuffed 
with  sawdust,  and  yet  are  excellent  play- 
things ;  that  hope  and  love  address  them- 
selves to  a  perfection  never  realised,  and  yet, 
firmly  held,  become  the  salt  and  staff  of  life  ; 
that  you  yourself  are  compacted  of  infirmities, 
perfect,  you  might  say,  in  imperfection,  and 
yet  you  have  a  something  in  you  lovable  and 
worth  preserving  ;  and  that,  while  the  mass 
of  mankind  lies  under  this  scurvy  condemna- 
tion, you  will  scarce  find  one  but,  by  some 
generous  reading,  will  become  to  you  a  lesson, 
a  model,  and  a  noble  spouse  through  life. 
So  thinking,  you  will  constantly  support 
your   own    unworthiness,  and   easily  forgive 


"  Virginibus  Puerisque  "  43 

the  failings  of  your  friend.  Nay,  you  will  be 
wisely  glad  that  you  retain  the  sense  of 
blemishes  ;  for  the  faults  of  married  people 
continually  spur  up  each  of  them,  hour  by 
hour,  to  do  better  and  to  meet  and  love 
upon  a  higher  ground.  And  ever,  between 
the  failures,  there  will  come  glimpses  of  kind 
virtues  to  encourage  and  console. 


44  "  Virginibus  Puerisque  " 


III.— ON  FALLING  IN  LOVE 

"  Lord,  what  fools  these  mortals  be  !" 

There  is  only  one  event  in  life  which  really 
astonishes  a  man  and  startles  him  out  of  his 
prepared  opinions.  Everything  else  befalls 
him  very  much  as  he  expected.  Event 
succeeds  to  event,  with  an  agreeable  variety 
indeed,  but  with  little  that  is  either  startling 
or  intense  ;  they  form  together  no  more  than 
a  sort  of  background,  or  running  accompani- 
ment to  the  man's  own  reflections  ;  and  he 
falls  naturally  into  a  cool,  curious,  and  smiling 
habit  of  mind,  and  builds  himself  up  in  a 
conception  of  life  which  expects  to-morrow 
to  be  after  the  pattern  of  to-day  and  yester- 
day. He  may  be  accustomed  to  the  vagaries 
of  his  friends  and  acquaintances  under  the 
influence  of  love.      He  may  sometimes  look 


"Virginibti.s  Pziertsque"  45 

forward  to  it  for  himself  with  an  incompre- 
hensible expectation.  But  it  is  a  subject  in 
which,  neither  intuition  nor  the  behaviour  of 
others  will  help  the  philosopher  to  the  truth. 
There  is  probably  nothing  rightly  thought  or 
rightly  written  on  this  matter  of  love  that  is 
not  a  piece  of  the  person's  experience.  I 
remember  an  anecdote  of  a  well-known 
French  theorist,  who  was  debating  a  point 
eagerly  in  his  c'enacle.  It  was  objected 
against  him  that  he  had  never  experienced 
love.  \\  hereupon  he  arose,  left  the  society, 
and  made  it  a  point  not  to  return  to  it  until 
he  considered  that  he  had  supplied  the  defect 
"  Now,"  he  remarked,  on  entering,  "  now  I 
am  in  a  position  to  continue  the  discussion." 
Perhaps  he  had  not  penetrated  very  deeply 
into  the  subject  after  all  ;  but  the  story  in- 
dicates right  thinking,  and  may  serve  as  an 
apologue  to  readers  of  this  essay. 

When  at  last  the  scales  fall  from  his  eyes, 
it  is  not  without  something  cf  the  nature  of 
dismay  that  the  man  finds  himself  in  such 
changed   conditions.      He   has   to  deal  with 


y 


46  "  Virginibus  Puerisque  " 

commanding  emotions  instead  of  the  easy 
dislikes  and  preferences  in  which  he  has 
hitherto  passed  his  days  ;  and  he  recognises 
/capabilities  for  pain  and  pleasure  of  which 
he  had  not  yet  suspected  the  existence. 
Falling  in  love  is  the  one  illogical  adventure, 
the  one  thing  of  which  we  are  tempted  to 
think  as  supernatural,  in  our  trite  and  reason- 
able world.  The  effect  is  out  of  all  proportion 
with  the  cause.  Two  persons,  neither  of 
them,  it  may  be,  very  amiable  or  very 
beautiful,  meet,  speak  a  little,  and  look  a 
little  into  each  other's  eyes.  That  has  been 
done  a  dozen  or  so  of  times  in  the  experience 
of  either  with  no  great  result.  But  on  this 
occasion  all  is  different.  They  fall  at  once 
into  that  state  in  which  another  person 
becomes  to  us  the  very  gist  and  centrepoint 
of  God's  creation,  and  demolishes  our  laborious 
theories  with  a  smile  ;  in  which  our  ideas 
are  so  bound  up  with  the  one  master-thought 
that  even  the  trivial  cares  of  our  own  person 
become  so  many  acts  of  devotion,  and  the 
love  of  life  itself  is  translated  into  a  wish  to 


*'  Virginibus  Puerisque  "  47 

remain  in  the  same  world  with  so  precious 
and  desirable  a  fellow-creature.  And  all 
the  while,  their  acquaintances  look  on  in 
stupor,  and  ask  each  other,  with  almost 
passionate  emphasis,  what  so-and-so  can  see 
in  that  woman,  or  such-an-one  in  that  man  ? 
I  am  sure,  gentlemen,  I  cannot  tell  you. 
For  my  part,  I  cannot  think  what  the  women 
mean.  It  might  be  very  well,  if  the  Apollo 
Belvedere  should  suddenly  glow  all  over  into 
life,  and  step  forward  from  the  pedestal  with 
that  godlike  air  of  his.  But  of  the  misbe- 
gotten changelings  who  call  themselves  men, 
and  prate  intolerably  over  dinner-tables,  I 
never  saw  one  who  seemed  worthy  to  inspire 
love — no,  nor  read  of  any,  except  Leonardo 
da  Vinci,  and  perhaps  Goethe  in  his  youth. 
About  women  I  entertain  a  somewhat  differ- 
ent opinion  ;  but  there,  I  have  the  misfortune 
to  be  a  man. 

There  are  many  matters  in  which  you 
may  waylay  Destiny,  and  bid  him  stand  and 
deliver.  Hard  work,  high  thinking,  adven- 
turous  excitement,  and  a   great   deal    more 


48  **Virginibus  PuertS(j7te*^ 

that  forms  a  part  of  this  or  the  other  person's 
spiritual  bill  of  fare,  are  within  the  reach  of 
almost  any  one  who  can  dare  a  little  and  be 
patient.      But  it  is  by  no  means  in  the  way 
of  every  one  to  fall  in  love.      You  know  the 
difficulty    Shakespeare   was    put    into   when 
Queen  Elizabeth  asked  him  to  show  Falstaff 
in  love.     I  do  not  believe  that  Henry  Fielding 
was  ^ver  in  love.      Scott,  if  it  were  not  for  a 
pass-  ge  or  two  in  Rob  Roy,  would  give  me 
very   nuch  the  same  effect.      These  are  great 
names  and   (what   is  more  to  the   purpose) 
strong,    healthy,    high-strung,  and    generous 
natures,  of  whom    the    reverse    might    have 
been    expected.       As    for    the    innumerable 
army  of  anaemic  and  tailorish  persons  who 
occupy  the  face  of  this  planet  with  so  much 
propriety,  it  is  palpably  absurd  to  imagine 
them  in  any  such  situation  as  a  love-affair. 
A  wet  rag  goes  safely  by  the   fire  ;  and  if  a 
man  is  blind,  he  cannot  expect  to  be  much 
impressed  by  romantic  scenery.      Apart  from 
all  this,  many  lovable  people  miss  each  other 
in  the  world,  or  meet  under  some  unfavoun 


**  Virgiiiibus  Pue risque  "  49 

able  star.  There  is  the  nice  and  critical 
moment  of  declaration  to  be  got  over.  From 
timidity  or  lack  of  opportunity  a  good  half 
of  possible  love  cases  never  get  so  far,  and 
at  least  another  quarter  do  there  cease  and 
determine.  A  very  adroit  person,  to  be  sure, 
manages  to  prepare  the  way  and  out  with 
his  declaration  in  the  nick  of  time.  And 
then  there  is  a  fine  solid  sort  of  man,  who 
goes  on  from  snub  to  snub  ;  and  if  he  has  to 
declare  forty  times,  will  continue  imperturb- 
ably  declaring,  amid  the  astonished  considera- 
tion of  men  and  angels,  until  he  has  a 
favourable  answer.  I  daresay,  if  one  were 
a  woman,  one  would  like  to  marry  a  man 
who  was  capable  of  doing  this,  but  not  quite 
one  who  had  done  so.  It  is  just  a  little  bit 
abject,  and  somehow  just  a  little  bit  gross  ; 
and  marriages  in  which  one  of  the  parties 
has  been  thus  battered  into  consent  scarcely 
fonn  agreeable  subjects  for  meditation.  Love 
should  run  out  to  meet  love  with  open  arms. 
Indeed,  the  ideal  story  is  that  of  two  people 

who  go  into  love  step  for  step,  with  a  fluttered 

E 


■*• 


50  **Vi7^ginibus  Ptierisque'' 

consciousness,  like  a  pair  of  children  ventur- 
ing together  into  a  dark  room.  From  the 
first  moment  when  they  see  each  other,  with 
a  pang  of  curiosity,  through  stage  after  stage 
of  growing  pleasure  and  embarrassment,  they 
can  read  the  expression  of  their  own  trouble 
in  each  other's  eyes.  There  is  here  no  decla- 
ration properly  so  called  ;  the  feeling  is  so 
plainly  shared,  that  as  soon  as  the  man  knows 
what  it  is  in  his  own  heart,  he  is  sure  of  what 
it  is  in  the  woman's. 

This  simple  accident  of  falling  in  love  is 
as  beneficial  as  it  is  astonishing.  It  arrests 
the  petrifying  influence  of  years,  disproves 
cold-blooded  and  cynical  conclusions,  and 
awakens  dormant  sensibilities.  Hitherto  the 
man  had  found  it  a  good  policy  to  disbelieve 
the  existence  of  any  enjoyment  which  was 
out  of  his  reach  ;  and  thus  he  turned  his 
back  upon  the  strong  sunny  parts  of  nature, 
and  accustomed  himself  to  look  exclusively 
on  what  was  common  and  dull.  He  accepted 
a  prose  ideal,  let  himself  go  blind  of  many 
sympathies  by  disuse  ;  and  if  he  were  young 


"  Virginibus  Puerisque  "  5 1 

and  witty,  or  beautiful,  wilfully  forewent 
these  advantages.  He  joined  himself  to  the 
following  of  what,  in  the  old  mythology  of 
love,  was  prettily  called  nonchaloir ;  and  in 
an  odd  mixture  of  feelings,  a  fling  of  self- 
respect,  a  preference  for  selfish  liberty,  and 
a  great  dash  of  that  tear  with  which  honest 
people  regard  serious  interests,  kept  himself 
back  from  the  straightforward  course  of  life 
among  certain  selected  activities.  And  now, 
all  of  a  sudden,  he  is  unhorsed,  like  St.  Paul, 
from  his  infidel  affectation.  His  heart,  vv^hich 
has  been  ticking  accurate  seconds  for  the 
last  year,  gives  a  bound  and  begins  to  beat 
high  and  irregularly  in  his  breast.  It  seems 
as  if  he  had  never  heard  or  felt  or  seen  until 
that  moment ;  and  by  the  report  of  his 
memory,  he  must  have  lived  his  past  life 
between  sleep  and  waking,  or  with  the  pre- 
occupied attention  of  a  brown  study.  He  is 
practically  incommoded  by  the  generosity  of 
his  feelings,  smiles  much  when  he  is  alone, 
and  develops  a  habit  of  looking  rather  blankly 
upon  the  moon  and  stars.      But  it  is  not  at 


52  "  Virginibus  Ptierisque  " 

all  within  the  province  of  a  prose  essayist  to 
give  a  picture  of  this  hyperbolical  frame  of 
mind  ;  and  the  thing  has  been  done  already, 
and  that  to  admiration.  In  Adelaide,  in 
Tennyson's  Maud,  and  in  some  of  Heine's 
songs,  you  get  the  absolute  expression  of 
this  midsummer  spirit.  Romeo  and  Juliet 
were  very  much  in  love  ;  although  they  tell 
me  some  German  critics  are  of  a  different 
opinion,  probably  the  same  who  would  have 
us  think  Mercutio  a  dull  fellow.  Poor 
Antony  was  in  love,  and  no  mistake.  That 
lay  figure  Marius,  in  Lcs  Miserables,  is  also  a 
genuine  case  in  his  own  way,  and  worth 
observation.  A  good  many  of  George  Sand's 
people  are  thoroughly  in  lovo  ;  and  so  are  a 
good  many  of  George  Meredith's.  Altogethei, 
there  is  plenty  to  read  on  the  subject.  If 
the  root  of  the  matter  be  in  him,  and  if  he 
has  the  requisite  chords  to  set  in  \  ibration, 
a  young  man  may  occasionally  enter,  with 
the  key  of  art,  into  that  land  of  Beulah  which 
is  upon  the  borders  of  Heaven  and  within 
sight  of  the  City  of  Love.     There  let  him 


''Virginihis  Puerlsque"  53 

sit    awhile    to   hatch    delightful    hopes    and 
perilous  illusions. 

One  thing  that  accompanies  the  passion 
in  its  first  blush  is  certainly  difficult  to  ex- 
plain. It  comes  (I  do  not  quite  see  how)  ^' 
that  from  having  a  very  supreme  sense  of 
pleasure  in  all  parts  of  life — in  lying  down 
to  sleep,  in  waking,  in  motion,  in  breathing, 
in  continuing  to  be — the  lover  begins  to 
regard  his  happiness  as  beneficial  for  the 
rest  of  the  world  and  highly  meritorious  in 
himself  Our  race  has  never  been  able  con- 
tentedly to  suppose  that  the  noise  of  its  wars, 
conducted  by  a  few  young  gentlemen  in  a 
corner  of  an  inconsiderable  star,  does  not  re- 
echo among  the  courts  of  Heaven  with  quite 
a  formidable  effect.  In  much  the  same  taste, 
when  people  find  a  great  to-do  in  their  own 
breasts,  they  imagine  it  must  have  some  in- 
fluence in  their  neighbourhood.  The  presence 
of  the  two  lovers  is  so  enchanting  to  each 
other  that  it  seems  as  if  it  must  be  the  best 
thing  possible  for  everybody  else.  They  are 
half  inclined  to  fancy  it  is  because  of  them 


54  *  *  Virginibus  Puerisque  " 

and  their  love  that  the  sky  is  blue  and  the 
sun  shines.  And  certainly  the  weather  is 
usually  fine  while  people  are  courting.  .  .  . 
In  point  of  fact,  although  the  happy  man 
feels  very  kindly  towards  others  of  his  own 
sex,  there  is  apt  to  be  something  too  much 
of  the  magnifico  in  his  demeanour.  If  people 
grow  presuming  and  self-important  over  such 
matters  as  a  dukedom  or  the  Holy  See,  they 
will  scarcely  support  the  dizziest  elevation  in 
life  without  some  suspicion  of  a  strut  ;  and 
the  dizziest  elevation  is  to  love  and  be  loved 
in  return.  Consequently,  accepted  lovers 
are  a  trifle  condescending  in  their  address  to 
other  men.  An  overweening  sense  of  the 
passion  and  importance  of  life  hardly  con- 
duces to  simplicity  of  manner.  To  women, 
they  feel  very  nobly,  very  purely,  and  very 
generously,  as  if  they  were  so  many  Joan-of- 
Arc's  ;  but  this  does  not  come  out  in  their 
behaviour ;  and  they  treat  them  to  Grandi- 
sonian  airs  marked  with  a  suspicion  of  fatuity, 
I  am  not  quite  certain  that  women  do  not 
like  this  sort  of  thing  ;  but  really,  after  having 


"  Virginibus  Puerisque  "  55 

bemused  myself  over  Daniel  Deronda,  I  have 
given  up  trying  to  understand  what  they  Hke. 
If  it   did   nothing  else,  this  sublime  and 
ridiculous   superstition,   that  the   pleasure  of 
the  pair  is  somehow  blessed  to  others,  and 
everybody  is  made  happier  n  their  happiness, 
would  serve  at  least  to  keep  love  generous 
and  great-hearted.      Nor  is  it  quite  a  baseless 
superstition    after    all.       Other     lovers     are 
hugely   interested.      They   strike   the   nicest 
balance   between    pity   and    approval,    when 
they  see  people  aping  the  greatness  cf  their 
own  sentiments.      It  is  an  understood  thing 
in  the  play,  that  while  the  young  gent.efolk 
are  courting  on  the  terrace,  a  rough  flirtation 
is  being  carried  on,  and  a  light,  trivial  sort 
of  love  is  growing  up,  between  the  footman 
and  the  singing   chambermaid.     As  people 
are  generally  cast  for  the  leading  parts   in 
their  own  imaginations,  the  reader  can  apply 
the  parallel  to  real  life  without  much  chance 
of  going   wrong.      In    short,  they   are  quite? 
sure   this  other   love-affair   is  not  so   deep- 
seated  as  their  own,  but  they  like  dearly  ta 


56  "  Virginibus  Pueriscpce  " 

see  it  going  forward.  And  love,  considered 
as  a  spectacle,  must  have  attractions  for 
many  who  are  not  of  the  confraternity.  The 
sentimental  old  maid  is  a  commonplace  ol 
the  novelists  ;  and  he  must  be  rather  a  poor 
sort  of  human  being,  to  be  sure,  who  can 
look  on  at  this  pretty  madness  without  in- 
dulgence and  sympathy.  For  nature  com- 
mends itself  to  people  with  a  most  insinuating 
art ;  the  busiest  is  now  and  again  arrested 
by  a  great  sunset  ;  and  you  may  be  as 
pacific  or  as  cold-blooded  as  you  will,  but 
you  cannot  help  some  emotion  when  you 
read  of  well-disputed  battles,  or  meet  a  pair 
of  lovers  in  the  lane. 

Certainly,  whatever  it  may  be  with  regard 
to  the  world  at  large,  this  idea  of  beneficent 
pleasure  is  true  as  between  the  sweethearts. 
To  do  good  and  communicate  is  the  lover's 
grand  intention.  It  is  the  happiness  of  the 
other  that  makes  his  own  most  intense 
gratification.  It  is  not  possible  to  disentangle 
the  different  emotions,  the  pride,  humility, 
pity    and    passion,  which  are  excited   by   a 


"  Vii'ginihus  Puerisque  "  57 

look  of  happy  love  or  an  unexpected  caress. 
To  make  one's  self  beautiful,  to  dress  the  hair, 
to  excel  in  talk,  to  do  anything  and  all 
things  that  puff  out  the  character  and  attri- 
butes and  make  them  imposing  in  the  eyes 
of  others,  is  not  only  to  magnify  one's  self, 
but  to  offer  the  most  delicate  homage  at  the 
same  time.  And  it  is  in  this  latter  intention 
that  they  are  done  by  lovers  ;  for  the  essence 
of  love  is  kindness  ;  and  indeed  it  may  be 
best  defined  as  passionate  kindness  :  kind- 
ness, so  to  speak,  run  mad  and  become 
importunate  and  violent.  Vanity  in  a  merely 
personal  sense  exists  no  longer.  The  lover 
takes  a  perilous  pleasure  in  privately  dis- 
playing his  weak  points  and  having  them, 
one  after  another,  accepted  and  condoned. 
He  wishes  to  be  assured  that  he  is  not  loved 
for  this  or  that  good  quality,  but  for  himself, 
or  something  as  like  himself  as  he  can 
contrive  to  set  forward.  For,  although  it 
may  have  been  a  very  difficult  thing  to  paint 
the  marriage  of  Cana,  or  write  the  fourth  act 
of  Antony  and    Cleopatra,  there  is  a  more 


58  "  Virginibus  Puerisque  " 

difficult  piece  of  art  before  every  one  in  thia 
world  who  cares  to  set  about  explaining  his 
own  character  to  others.  Words  and  acts 
are  easily  wrenched  from  their  true  signifi- 
cance ;  and  they  are  all  the  language  we 
have  to  come  and  go  upon.  A  pitiful  job  we 
make  of  it,  as  a  rule.  For  better  or  worse, 
people  mistake  our  meaning  and  take  our 
emotions  at  a  wrong  valuation.  And  gener- 
ally we  rest  pretty  content  with  our  failures  ; 
we  are  content  to  be  misapprehended  by  cack- 
ling flirts  ;  but  when  once  a  man  is  moonstruck 
ivith  this  affection  of  love,  he  makes  it  a 
point  of  honour  to  clear  such  dubieties  away. 
He  cannot  have  the  Best  of  her  Sex  misled 
upon  a  point  of  this  importance  ;  and  his 
pride  revolts  at  being  loved  in  a  mistake. 

He  discovers  a  great  reluctance  to  return 
on  former  periods  of  his  life.  To  all  that 
has  not  been  shared  with  herrirights  and_ 
duties,  bygone  fortunes  and  dispositions,  he 
can  look  back  only  by  a  difficult  and  repug*. 
nant  effort  of  the  will.  That  he  should  have 
wasted    some    years    in    ignorance   of   what 


'^Virginibus  Puerisque"  59 

alone  was  really  important,  that  he  may 
have  entertained  the  thought  of  other  women 
v;ith  any  show  of  complacency,  is  a  burthen 
almost  too  heavy  for  his  self-respect.  But 
it  is  the  thought  of  another  past  that  rankles 
in  his  spirit  like  a  poisoned  wound.  That 
he  himself  made  a  fashion  of  being  alive  in 
the  bald,  beggarly  days  before  a  certain 
meeting,  is  deplorable  enough  in  all  good 
conscience.  But  that  She  should  have  per- 
mitted herself  the  same  liberty  seems  incon- 
sistent with  a  Divine  providence. 

A  great  many  people  run  down  jealousy, 
on  the  score  that  it  is  an  artificial  feeling,  as 
well  as  practically  inconvenient.  This  is 
scarcely  fair ;  for  the  feeling  on  which  it 
merely  attends,  like  an  ill-humoured  courtier, 
is  itself  artificial  in  exactly  the  same  sense 
and  to  the  same  degree.  I  suppose  what  is 
meant  by  that  objection  is  that  jealousy  has 
not  always  been  a  character  of  man  ;  formed 
no  part  of  that  very  modest  kit  of  sentiments 
with  which  he  is  supposed  to  have  begun  the 
world  ;  but  waited   to  make  its  appearance 


6o  '*  Virginibus  Puerisque  " 

in  better  days  and  among  richer  natures 
And  this  is  equally  true  of  love,  and  friend- 
ship, and  love  of  country,  and  delight  in 
what  they  call  the  beauties  of  nature,  and 
most  other  things  worth  having.  Love,  in 
particular,  will  not  endure  any  historical 
scrutiny  :  to  all  who  have  fallen  across  it,  it 
is  one  of  the  most  incontestable  facts  in  the 
world  ;  but  if  you  begin  to  ask  what  it  was 
in  other  periods  and  countries,  in  Greece  for 
instance,  the  strangest  doubts  begin  to  spring 
up,  and  everything  seems  so  vague  and 
changing  that  a  dream  is  logical  in  compari- 
son. Jealousy,  at  any  rate,  is  one  of  the 
consequences  of  love  ;  you  may  like  it  or 
not,  at  pleasure  ;  but  there  it  is. 

It  is  not  exactly  jealousy,  however,  that 
we  feel  when  we  reflect  on  the  past  of  those 
we  love.  A  bundle  of  letters  found  after 
years  of  happy  union  creates  no  sense  of 
insecurity  in  the  present ;  and  yet  it  will 
pain  a  man  sharply.  The  two  people  enter- 
tain no  vulgar  doubt  of  each  other :  but  this 
pre-existence  of  both  occurs  to  the  mind  as 


"Virginibus  Pue7'isque"  6i 

something  indelicate.  To  be  altogether  right, 
they  should  have  had  twin  birth  together,  at 
the  same  moment  with  the  feeling  that  unites 
them.  Then  indeed  it  would  be  simple  and 
perfect  and  without  reserve  or  afterthought. 
Then  they  would  understand  each  other  with 
a  fulness  impossible  otherwise.  There  would 
be  no  barrier  between  them  of  associations 
that  cannot  be  imparted.  They  would  be 
led  into  none  of  those  comparisons  that  send 
the  blood  back  to  the  heart.  And  they 
would  know  that  there  had  been  no  time 
lost,  and  they  had  been  together  as  much  as 
was  possible.  For  besides  terror  for  the 
separation  that  must  follow  some  time  or 
other  in  the  future,  men  feel  anger,  and 
something  like  remorse,  when  they  think  of 
that  other  separation  which  endured  until 
they  met.  Some  one  has  written  that  Jove 
makes  people  believe  in  immortality,  because 
there  seems  not  to  be  room  enough  in  life 
for  so  great  a  tenderness,  and  it  is  inconceiv- 
able that  the  most  masterful  of  our  emotions 
should  have  no  more  than  the  spare  moments 


62  "  Virginibus  Puerisque  " 

of  a  few  years.  Indeed,  it  seems  strange ; 
but  if  we  call  to  mind  analogies,  we  can 
hardly  regard  it  as  impossible. 

"  The  blind  bow-boy,"  who  smiles  upon  us 
from  the  end  of  terraces  in  old  Dutch  gardens, 
laughingly  hails  his  bird-bolts  among  a  fleet- 
ing generation.      But  for  as  fast  as  ever  'he 
shoots,  the   game   dissolves    and    disappears 
into  eternity  from  under  his  falling  arrows  ; 
this  one  is  gone  ere  he  is  struck  ;  the  other 
has  but  time  to  make  one  gesture  and  give 
one    passionate   cry  ;   and    they  are   all    the 
things  of  a  moment.      When  the  generation 
is    gone,  when    the    play  is  over,  when   the 
thirty  years'  panorama  has  been  withdrawn 
in  tatters  from  the  stage  of  the  world,  we 
may  ask  what   has  become  of  these  great, 
weighty,  and  undying  loves,  and  the  sweet- 
hearts who  despised   mortal  conditions  in  a 
fine  credulity  ;  and  they  can  only  show  us  a 
few  songs  in  a  bygone  taste,  a  few  actions 
worth  remembering,  and  a  few  children  who 
have  retained   some  happy  stamp  fronj   the 
disposition  of  their  parents. 


**  Virginibus  Puerisque  "  63 


IV,— TRUTH  OF  INTERCOURSE 

Among  sayings  that  have  a  currency  in  spite 
of  being  wholly  false  upon  the  face  of  them 
for  the  sake  of  a  half-truth  upon  another 
subject  which  is  accidentally  combined  with 
the  error,  one  of  the  grossest  and  broadest 
conveys  the  monstrous  proposition  that  it  is 
easy  to  tell  the  truth  and  hard  to  tell  a  lie. 
I  wish  heartily  it  were.  But  the  truth  is 
one  ;  it  has  first  to  be  discovered,  then  justly 
and  exactly  uttered.  Even  with  instruments 
specially  contrived  for  such  a  purpose — with 
a  foot  rule,  a  level,  or  a  theodolite — it  is  not 
easy  to  be  exact ;  it  is  easier,  alas  1  to  be 
inexact.  From  those  who  mark  the  divi- 
sions on  a  scale  to  those  who  measure  the 
boundaries  of  empires  or  the  distance  of  the 
heavenly  stars,  it  is  by  careful  method   and 


64  *'  Virginibus  Puerisque  " 

minute,  unwearying  attention  that  men  rise 
even  to  material  exactness  or  to  sure  know- 
ledge even  of  external  and  constant  things. 
But  it  is  easier  to  draw  the  outline  of  a 
mountain  than  the  changing  appearance  of  a 
face  ;  and  truth  in  human  relations  is  of  this 
more  intangible  and  dubious  order :  hard  to 
seize,  harder  to  communicate.  Veracity  to 
facts  in  a  loose,  colloquial  sense — not  to  say 
that  I  have  been  in  Malabar  when  as  a  matter 
of  fact  I  was  never  out  of  England,  not  to 
say  that  I  have  read  Cervantes  in  the  original 
when  as  a  matter  of  fact  I  know  not  one 
syllable  of  Spanish — this,  indeed,  is  easy  and 
to  the  same  degree  unimportant  in  itself. 
Lies  of  this  sort,  according  to  circumstances, 
may  or  may  not  be  important ;  in  a  certain 
sense  even  they  may  or  may  not  be  false. 
The  habitual  liar  may  be  a  very  honest 
fellow,  and  live  truly  with  his  wife  and 
friends  ;  while  another  man  who  never  told 
a  formal  falsehood  in  his  life  may  yet  be 
himself  one  lie — heart  and  face,  from  top  to 
bottom.       This    is    the    kind    of   lie    which 


**Virginibus  Puerisque"  65 

poisons  intimacy.  And,  vice  versct,  veracity 
to  sentiment,  trutii  in  a  relation,  truth  to 
your  own  heart  and  your  friends,  never  to 
feign  or  falsify  emotion — that  is  the  truth 
which  makes  love  possible  and  mankind 
happy, 

Lart  de  bien  dire  is  but  a  drawing-room 
accomplishment  unless  it  be  pressed  into  the 
service  of  the  truth.  The  difficulty  of  litera- 
ture is  not  to  write,  but  to  write  what  you 
mean  ;  not  to  affect  your  reader,  but  to 
affect  him  precisely  as  you  wish.  This  is 
commonly  understood  in  the  case  of  books 
or  set  orations  ;  even  in  making  your  will,  or 
writing  an  explicit  letter,  some  difficulty  is 
admitted  by  the  world.  But  one  thing  you 
can  never  make  Philistine  natures  under- 
stand ;  one  thing,  which  yet  lies  on  the 
surface,  remains  as  unseizable  to  their  wits 
as  a  high  flight  of  metaphysics — namely,  that 
the  business  of  life  is  mainly  carried  on  by 
means  of  this  difficult  art  of  literature,  and 
according  to  a  man's  proficiency  in  that  art 

shall   be  the  freedom  and  the  fulness  of  his 

F 


66  ^''Viyginibus  Puerisque" 

intercourse  with  other  men.  Anybody,  it  is 
supposed,  can  say  what  he  means ;  and,  in 
spite  of  their  notorious  experience  to  the 
contrary,  people  so  continue  to  suppose. 
Now,  I  simply  open  the  last  book  I  have 
been  reading — Mr.  Leland's  captivating  Eng- 
lish Gipsies.  "  It  is  said,"  I  find  on  p.  7, 
"  that  those  who  can  converse  with  Irish 
peasants  in  their  own  native  tongue  form  far 
higher  opinions  of  their  appreciation  of  the 
beautiful,  and  of  the  elements  of  humour  and 
pathos  in  their  hearts,  than  do  those  who 
know  their  thoughts  only  through  the 
medium  of  English.  I  know  from  my  own 
observations  that  this  is  quite  the  case  with 
the  Indians  of  North  America,  and  it  is 
unquestionably  so  with  the  gipsy,"  In  short, 
where  a  man  has  not  a  full  possession  of  the 
language,  the  most  important,  because  the 
most  amiable,  qualities  of  his  nature  have  to 
lie  buried  and  fallow  ;  for  the  pleasure  of 
comradeship,  and  the  intellectual  part  of  love, 
rest  upon  these  very  "  elements  of  humour 
and    pathos."      Here   is   a   man    opulent   in 


"  Virginibus  Puerisque  "  67 

bothj  and  for  lack  of  a  medium  he  can  put 
none  of  it  out  to  interest  in  the  market  of 
affection  !  But  what  is  thus  made  plain  to 
our  apprehensions  in  the  case  of  a  foreign 
language  is  partially  true  even  with  the 
tongue  we  learned  in  childhood.  Indeed,  we 
all  speak  different  dialects  ;  one  shall  be 
copious  and  exact,  another  loose  and  meagre ; 
but  the  speech  of  the  ideal  talker  shall  cor- 
respond and  fit  upon  the  truth  of  fact — not 
clumsily,  obscuring  lineaments,  like  a  mantle, 
but  cleanly  adhering,  like  an  athlete's  skin. 
And  what  is  the  result  ?  That  the  one  can 
open  himself  more  clearly  to  his  friends,  and 
can  enjoy  more  of  what  makes  life  truly 
valuable — intimacy  with  those  he  loves.  An 
orator  makes  a  false  step  ;  he  employs  some 
trivial,  some  absurd,  some  vulgar  phrase  ;  in 
the  turn  of  a  sentence  he  insults,  by  a  side 
wind,  those  whom  he  is  labouring  to  charm  ; 
in  speaking  to  one  sentiment  he  unconsciously 
ruffles  another  in  parenthesis  ;  and  you  are 
not  surprised,  for  you  know  his  task  to  be 
delicate  and  filled  with  perils.     *'  O  frivolous 


68  "  Virgiiiibiis  Puerisque  " 

mind  of  man,  light  ignorance  !"  As  if  your* 
self,  when  you  seek  to  explain  some  mis- 
understanding or  excuse  some  apparent  fauit, 
speaking  swiftly  and  addressing  a  mind  still 
recently  incensed,  were  not  harnessing  for  a 
more  perilous  adventure  ;  as  if  yourself 
required  less  tact  and  eloquence  ;  as  if  an 
angry  friend  or  a  suspicious  lover  were  not 
more  easy  to  offend  than  a  meeting  ot 
indifferent  politicians  !  Nay,  and  the  orator 
treads  in  a  beaten  round  j  the  matters  he 
discusses  have  been  discussed  a  thousand 
times  before  ;  language  is  ready -shaped  to 
his  purpose  ;  he  speaks  out  of  a  cut  and  dry 
vocabulary.  But  you — may  it  not  be  that 
your  defence  reposes  on  some  subtlety  of 
feeling,  not  so  much  as  touched  upon  in 
Shakespeare,  to  express  which,  like  a  pioneer, 
you  must  venture  forth  into  zones  of  thought 
still  unsurveyed,  and  become  yourself  a 
literary  innovator?  For  even  in  love  there 
are  unlovely  humours  ;  ambiguous  acts,  un- 
pardonable words,  may  yet  have  sprung  from 
a  kind  sentiment.      If  the  injured  one  could 


*^Virginibus  Puerisque^'  6g 

read  your  heart,  you  may  be  sure  that  he 
would  understand  and  pardon  ;  but,  alas ! 
the  heart  cannot  be  shown — it  has  to  be 
demonstrated  in  words.  Do  you  think  it  is 
&  hard  thing  to  write  poetry  ?  Why,  that  is 
to  write  poetry,  and  of  a  high,  if  not  the 
highest,  order. 

I  should  even  more  admire  "  the  lifelong 
and  heroic  literary  labours "  of  my  fellow- 
men,  patiently  clearing  up  in  words  their 
loves  and  their  contentions,  and  speaking 
their  autobiography  daily  to  their  wives,  were 
it  not  for  a  circumstance  which  lessens  their 
difficulty  and  my  admiration  by  equal  parts. 
For  life,  though  largely,  is  not  entirely  carried 
on  by  literature.  We  are  subject  to  physical 
passions  and  contortions  ;  the  voice  breaks 
and  changes,  and  speaks  by  unconscious  and 
winning  inflections  ;  we  have  legible  coun- 
tenances, like  an  open  book ;  things  that 
cannot  be  said  look  eloquently  through  the 
eyes  ;  and  the  soul,  not  locked  into  the  body 
as  a  dungeon,  dwells  ever  on  the  threshold 
with  appealing  signals.     Groans   and   tears, 


70  **  Virginibus  Puerisque  " 

looks  and  gestures,  a  flush  or  a  paleness,  are 
often  the  most  clear  reporters  of  the  heart, 
and  speak  more  directly  to  the  hearts  of 
others.  The  message  flies  by  these  inter- 
preters in  the  least  space  of  time,  and  the 
misunderstanding  is  averted  in  the  moment 
of  its  birth.  To  explain  in  words  takes  time 
and  a  just  and  patient  hearing  ;  and  in  the 
critical  epochs  of  a  close  relation,  patience 
and  justice  are  not  qualities  on  which  we 
can  rely.  But  the  look  or  the  gesture 
explains  things  in  a  breath ;  they  tell  their 
message  without  ambiguity  ;  unlike  speech, 
they  cannot  stumble,  by  the  way,  on  a  re- 
proach or  an  allusion  that  should  steel  your 
friend  against  the  truth  ;  and  then  they  have 
a  higher  authority,  for  they  are  the  direct 
expression  of  the  heart,  not  yet  transmitted 
through  the  unfaithful  and  sophisticating 
brain.  Not  long  ago  I  wrote  a  letter  to  a 
friend  which  came  near  involving  us  in 
quarrel ;  but  we  met,  and  in  personal  talk  I 
repeated  the  worst  of  what  I  had  written, 
and  added  worse  to  that ;  and  with  the  com* 


"  Virginibus  Puerisque  '*  71 

mentary  of  the  body  it  seemed  not  unfriendly 
either  to  hear  or  say.  Indeed,  letters  are  in 
vain  for  the  purposes  of  intimacy  ;  an  absence 
is  a  dead  break  in  the  relation  ;  yet  two  who 
know  each  other  fully  and  are  bent  on  per- 
petuity in  love,  may  so  preserve  the  attitude 
of  their  affections  that  they  may  meet  on  the 
same  terms  as  they  had  parted. 

Pitiful  is  the  case  of  the  blind,  who  cannot 
read  the  face  ;  pitiful  that  of  the  deaf,  who 
cannot  follow  the  changes  of  the  voice.  And 
there  are  others  also  to  be  pitied  ;  for  there 
are  some  of  an  inert,  uneloquent  nature,  who 
have  been  denied  all  the  symbols  of  com- 
munication, who  have  neither  a  lively  play 
of  facial  expression,  nor  speaking  gestures, 
nor  a  responsive  voice,  nor  yet  the  gift  of 
frank,  explanatory  speech :  people  truly 
made  of  clay,  people  tied  for  life  into  a  bag 
which  no  one  can  undo.  They  are  poorer 
than  the  gipsy,  for  their  heart  can  speak  no 
language  under  heaven.  Such  people  we 
must  learn  slowly  by  the  tenor  of  their  acts, 
or  through  yea  and  nay  communications  ;  01 


72  *^Virginibus  Puerisque^^ 

we  take  them  on  trust  on  the  strength  of  a 
general  air,  and  now  and  again,  when  we  see 
the  spirit  breaking  through  in  a  flash,  correct 
or  change  our  estimate.  But  these  will  be 
uphill  intimacies,  without  charm  or  freedom, 
to  the  end  ;  and  freedom  is  the  chief  ingredi- 
ent in  confidence.  Some  minds,  romantically 
dull,  despise  physical  endowments.  That  is 
a  doctrine  for  a  misanthrope ;  to  those  who 
like  their  fellow-creatures  it  must  always  be 
meaningless  ;  and,  for  my  part,  I  can  see  few 
things  more  desirable,  after  the  possession  of 
such  radical  qualities  as  honour  and  humour 
and  pathos,  than  to  have  a  lively  and  not  a 
stolid  countenance  ;  to  have  looks  to  corre- 
spond with  every  feeling  ;  to  be  elegant  and 
delightful  in  person,  so  that  we  shall  please 
even  in  the  intervals  of  active  pleasing,  and 
may  never  discredit  speech  with  uncouth 
manners  or  become  unconsciously  our  own 
burlesques.  But  of  all  unfortunates  there  is 
one  creature  (for  I  will  not  call  him  man) 
conspicuous  in  misfortune.  This  is  he  who 
has  forfeited  his  birthright  of  expression,  who 


' '  Virginibus  Puerisque  "  73 

has  cultivated  artful  intonations,  who  has 
taught  his  face  tricks,  like  a  pet  monkey,  and 
on  every  side  perverted  or  cut  off  his  means 
of  communication  with  his  fellow-men.  The 
body  is  a  house  of  many  windows  :  there  we 
all  sit,  showing  ourselves  and  crying  on  the 
passers-by  to  come  and  love  us.  But  this 
fellow  has  filled  his  windows  with  opaque 
glass,  elegantly  coloured.  His  house  may  be 
admired  for  its  design,  the  crowd  may  pause 
before  the  stained  windows,  but  meanwhile 
the  poor  proprietor  must  lie  languishing 
within,  uncomforted,  unchangeably  alone. 

Truth  of  intercourse  is  something  more 
difficult  than  to  refrain  from  open  lies.  It  is 
possible  to  avoid  falsehood  and  yet  not  tell 
the  truth.  It  is  not  enough  to  answer  formal  /y 
questions.  To  reach  the  truth  by  yea  and 
nay  communications  implies  a  questioner 
with  a  share  of  inspiration,  such  as  is  often 
found  in  mutual  love.  Yea  and  nay  mean 
nothing;  the  meaning  must  have  been  related 
in  the  question.  Many  words  are  often 
necessary  to  convey  a  very  simple  statement; 


^TAiri^f.ini'H'Uii  QrPAAii 


74  "  Virginibus  Puerisque  " 

for  in  this  sort  of  exercise  we  never  hit  the 
gold  ;  the  most  that  we  can  hope  is  by  many 
arrows,  more  or  less  far  off  on  different  sides, 
to  indicate,  in  the  course  of  time,  for  what 
target  we  are  aiming,  and  after  an  hour's 
talk,  back  and  forward,  to  convey  the  purport 
of  a  single  principle  or  a  single  thought 
And  yet  while  the  curt,  pithy  speaker  misses 
the  point  entirely,  a  wordy,  prolegomenous 
babbler  will  often  add  three  new  offences  in 
the  process  of  excusing  one.  It  is  really  a 
most  delicate  affair.  The  world  was  made 
before  the  English  language,  and  seemingly 
upon  a  different  design.  Suppose  we  held 
our  converse  not  in  words,  but  in  music  ; 
those  who  have  a  bad  ear  would  find  them- 
selves cut  off  from  all  near  commerce,  and 
no  better  than  foreigners  in  this  big  world, 
But  we  do  not  consider  how  many  have  "  a 
bad  ear  "  for  words,  nor  how  often  the  most 
eloquent  find  nothing  to  reply.  I  hate  ques- 
tioners and  questions ;  there  are  so  few  that 
can  be  spoken  to  without  a  lie.  ^'' Do  you 
forgive  me?"      IMadam  and  sweetheart,  so  far 


*'  Virginibus  Puerisque  **  7$ 

as  I  have  gone  in  life  I  have  never  yet  been 
able  to  discover  what  forgiveness  means. 
**  Js  it  still  the  same  between  iis?"  Why, 
how  can  it  be  ?  It  is  eternally  different ; 
and  yet  you  are  still  the  friend  of  my  heart. 
**  Do  you  uiiderstana  me  ?"  God  knows  ;  I 
should  think  it  highly  improbable. 

The  cruellest  lies  are  often  told  in  silence. 
A  man  may  have  sat  in  a  room  for  hours 
and  not  opened  his  teeth,  and  yet  come  out 
of  that  room  a  disloyal  friend  or  a  vile 
calumniator.  And  how  many  loves  have 
perished  because,  from  pride,  or  spite,  or 
diffidence,  or  that  unmanly  shame  which 
withholds  a  man  from  daring  to  betray 
emotion,  a  lover,  at  the  critical  point  of  the 
relation,  has  but  hung  his  head  and  held  his 
tongue  ?  And,  again,  a  lie  may  be  told  by 
a  truth,  or  a  truth  conveyed  through  a  lie. 
Truth  to  facts  is  not  always  truth  to  senti- 
ment ;  and  part  of  the  truth,  as  often  happens 
in  answer  to  a  question,  may  be  the  foulest 
calumny.  A  fact  may  be  an  exception  ; 
but   the   feeling    is   the   law,  and    it  is  that 


76  •*  Virginibus  Puerisque  " 

which  you  must  neither  garble  nor  belie. 
The  whole  tenor  of  a  conversation  is  a  part 
of  the  meaning  of  each  separate  statement ; 
the  beginning  and  the  end  define  and  travesty 
the  intermediate  conversation.  You  never 
speak  to  God  ;  you  address  a  fellow-man, 
full  of  his  own  tempers  ;  and  to  tell  truth, 
rightly  understood,  is  not  to  state  the  true 
facts,  but  to  convey  a  true  impression  ;  truth 
in  spirit,  not  truth  to  letter,  is  the  true 
veracity.  To  reconcile  averted  friends  a 
Jesuitical  discretion  is  often  needful,  not  so 
much  to  gain  a  kind  hearing  as  to  communi- 
cate sober  truth.  Women  have  an  ill  name 
in  this  connection  ;  yet  they  live  in  as  true 
relations  ;  the  lie  of  a  good  woman  is  the 
true  index  of  her  heart. 

"  It  takes,"  says  Thoreau,  in  the  noblest 
and  most  useful  passage  I  remember  to  have 
read  in  any  modern  author,^  "  two  to  speak 
truth — one  to  speak  and  another  to  hear." 
He  must  be  very  little  experienced,  or  have 

1  A  Week  on  the  Concord  and  Merrimack  Rivers^  Wedne  r 
day,  p.  283. 


**  Virginiht  f  Puerisque  ^  77 

no  great  zeal  for  truth,  who  does  not  re- 
cognise the  fact.  A  grain  of  anger  or  a 
grain  of  suspicion  produces  strange  acoustical 
effects,  and  makes  the  ear  greedy  to  remark 
offence.  Hence  we  find  those  who  have 
once  quarrelled  carry  themselves  distantly, 
and  are  ever  ready  to  break  the  truce.  To 
speak  truth  there  must  be  moral  equality  or 
else  no  respect  ;  and  hence  between  parent, 
and  child  intercourse  is  apt  to  degenerate 
into  a  verbal  fencing  bout,  and  misappre- 
hensions to  become  ingrained.  And  there 
is  another  side  to  this,  for  the  parent  begins 
with  an  imperfect  notion  of  the  child's 
character,  formed  in  early  years  or  during 
the  equinoctial  gales  of  youth ;  to  this  he 
adheres,    noting   only   the    facts    which   suit 

with    his    preconception  ;    and    wherever a. 

person_Jajicies-4Hfl^self  unjustlv^judged.  he 
at  once  and  finally  gives  up  the_effort__ta. 
speak  truth.  With  our  chosen  friends,  on 
the  other  hand,  and  still  more  between 
lovers  (for  mutual  understanding  is  love's 
essence),  the  truth  is  easily  indicated  by  the 


73  *'  Virginibus  Puertsque  " 

one  and  aptly  comprehended  by  the  other. 
A  hint  taken,  a  look  understood,  conveys 
the  gist  of  long  and  delicate  explanations  ; 
and  where  the  life  is  known  even  yea  and 
nay  become  luminous.  In  the  closest  of  all 
relations — that  of  a  love  well  founded  and 
equally  shared — speech  is  half  discarded,  1 
like  a  roundabout,  infantile  process  or  a 
ceremony  of  formal  etiquette ;  and  the  two 
communicate  directly  by  their  presences, 
and  with  few  looks  and  fewer  words  contrive 
to  share  their  good  and  evil  and  uphold  each 
other's  hearts  in  joy.  For  love  rests  upon 
a  physical  basis  ;  it  is  a  familiarity  of  nature's 
making  and  apart  from  voluntary  choice. 
Understanding  has  in  some  sort  outrun 
knowledge,  for  the  affection  perhaps  began 
with  the  acquaintance  ;  and  as  it  was  not 
made  like  other  relations,  so  it  is  not,  like 
them,  to  be  perturbed  or  clouded.  Each 
knows  more  than  can  be  uttered  ;  each  lives 
by  faith,  and  believes  by  a  natural  compul- 
sion ;  and  between  man  and  wife  the 
language  of  the  body  is  largely  developed 


"  Virginibus  Puerisque  "  79 

and  grown  strangely  eloquent.  The  thought 
that  prompted  and  was  conveyed  in  a  caress 
would  only  lose  to  be  set  down  in  words — 
ay,  although  Shakespeare  himself  should  be 
the  scribe. 

Yet  it  is  in  these  dear  intimacies,  beyond 
all  others,  that  we  must  strive  and  do  battle 
for  the  truth.  Let  but  a  doubt  arise,  and 
alas  !  all  the  previous  intimacy  and  confid- 
ence is  but  another  charge  against  the  person 
doubted.  "  What  a  monstrous  dishonesty  is 
this  if  I  have  beeji  deceived  so  long  and  so 
completely  !"  Let  but  that  thought  gain 
entrance,  and  you  plead  before  a  deaf  tri- 
bunal. Appeal  to  the  past;  why,  that  is 
your  crime !  Make  all  clear,  convince  the 
reason  ;  alas !  speciousness  is  but  a  proof 
against  you.  "  If  you  can  abuse  me  now,  the 
more  likely  that  you  have  abused  me  from 
the  firsts 

For  a  strong  affection  such  moments  are 
worth  supporting,  and  they  will  end  well  ; 
for  your  advocate  is  in  your  lover's  heart 
and  speaks  her  own  language  ;  it  is  not  you 


8o  "  Virginibus  Puerisqiie  " 

but  she  herself  who  can  defend  and  clear 
you  of  the  charge.  But  in  slighter  intimacies, 
and  for  a  less  stringent  union  ?  Indeed,  is 
it  worth  while  ?  We  are  all  incompris,  only 
more  or  less  concerned  for  the  mischance  ; 
all  trying  wrongly  to  do  right  ;  all  fawning 
at  each  other's  feet  like  dumb,  neglected 
lap-dogs.  Sometimes  we  catch  an  eye — 
this  is  our  opportunity  in  the  ages — and  we 
wag  our  tail  with  a  poor  smile,  "/y  that 
all?"  All?  If  you  only  knew!  But  how 
can  they  know  ?  They  do  not  love  us  ;  the 
more  fools  we  to  squander  life  on  the  in- 
different. 

But  the  morality  of  the  thing,  you  will 
oe  glad  to  hear,  is  excellent ;  for  it  is  only 
by  trying  to  understand  others  that  we  can 
get  our  own  hearts  understood  ;  and  in 
matters  of  human  feeling  the  clement  judge 
is  the  most  successful  pleader. 


CRABBED  AGE  AND  YOUTH 

"You  know  my  mother  now  and  then  argues  very 
aotably ;  always  veiy  warmly  at  least.  I  happen  often  to 
differ  from  her ;  and  we  both  think  so  well  of  our  own 
arguments,  that  we  very  seldom  are  so  happy  as  to  convince 
one  another.  A  pretty  common  case,  I  believe,  in  all 
vehement  debatings.  She  says,  I  am  too  witty ;  Anglice, 
too  pert ;  I,  that  she  is  too  wise  ;  that  is  to  say,  being  iilje- 
wise  put  into  English,  not  so  young  as  she  has  been." — Miss 
Howe  to  Miss  Harlowe,  Clarissa,  vol.  ii.  Letter  xiiL 


T 


HERE  is  a  strong  feeling  in  favour  of 
cowardly  and  prudential  proverbs.  The 
sentiments  of  a  man  while  he  is  full  of  ardour 
and  hope  are  to  be  received,  it  is  supposed, 
with  some  qualification.  But  when  the  same 
person  has  ignominiously  failed  and  begins 
to  cat  up  his  words,  he  should  be  listened  to 
like  an  oracle.  Most  of  our  pocket  wisdom 
is  conceived  for  the  use  of  mediocre  people, 
to  discourage  them  from  ambitious  attempts, 


82  Crabbed  Age  and  Youth 

and  generally  console  them  in  their  medio- 
crity. And  since  mediocre  people  constitute 
the  bulk  of  humanity,  this  is  no  doubt  very 
properly  so.  But  it  does  not  follow  that  the 
one  sort  of  proposition  is  any  less  true  than 
the  other,  or  that  Icarus  is  not  to  be  more 
praised,  and  perhaps  more  envied,  than  Mr. 
Samuel  Budgett  the  Successful  Merchant 
The  one  is  dead,  to  be  sure,  while  the  other 
is  still  in  his  counting-house  counting  out 
his  money  ;  and  doubtless  this  is  a  considera- 
tion. But  we  have,  on  the  other  hand,  some 
bold  and  magnanimous  sayings  common  to 
high  races  and  natures,  which  set  forth  the 
advantage  of  the  losing  side,  and  proclaim  it 
better  to  be  a  dead  lion  than  a  living  dog. 
It  is  difficult  to  fancy  how  the  mediocrities 
reconcile  such  sayings  with  their  proverbs. 
According  to  the  latter,  every  lad  who  goes 
to  sea  is  an  egregious  ass  ;  never  to  forget 
your  umbrella  through  a  long  life  would  seem 
a  higher  and  wiser  flight  of  achievement  than 
V)  go  smiling  to  the  stake  ;  and  so  long  as 
you  are  a  bit  of  a  coward   and  inflexible  in 


Crabbed  Age  and  Youth  8  3 

money  matters,  you  fulfil  the  whole  duty  of 
man. 

It  is  a  still  more  difficult  consideration  for 
our  average  men,  that  while  all  their  teachers, 
from  Solomon  down  to  Benjamin  Franklin 
and  the  ungodly  Binney,  have  inculcated  the 
same  ideal  of  manners,  caution,  and  respect- 
ability, those  characters  in  history  who  have 
most  notoriously  flown  in  the  face  of  such 
precepts  are  spoken  of  in  hyperbolical  terms 
of  praise,  and  honoured  with  public  monu- 
ments in  the  streets  of  our  commercial 
centres.  This  is  very  bewildering  to  the 
moral  sense.  You  have  Joan  of  Arc,  who 
left  a  humble  but  honest  and  reputable  liveli- 
hood under  the  eyes  of  her  parents,  to  go 
a-colonelling,  in  the  company  of  rowdy 
soldiers,  against  the  enemies  of  France ; 
surely  a  melancholy  example  for  one's 
daughters !  And  then  you  have  Columbus, 
who  may  have  pioneered  America,  but,  when 
all  is  said,  was  a  most  imprudent  navigator. 
His  life  is  not  the  kind  of  thing  one  would 
like  to  put  into  the  hands  of  young  people ; 


84  Crabbed  Age  and  Youth 

rather,  one  would  do  one's  utmost  to  keep  it 
from  their  knowledge,  as  a  red  flag  of  adven- 
ture and  disintegrating  influence  in  life.  The 
time  would  fail  me  if  I  were  to  recite  all  the 
big  names  in  history  \vhose  exploits  are 
perfectly  irrational  and  even  shocking  to  the 
business  mind.  The  incongruity  is  speaking; 
and  I  imagine  it  must  engender  among  the 
mediocrities  a  very  peculiar  attitude  towards 
the  nobler  and  showier  sides  of  national  life. 
They  will  read  of  the  Charge  of  Balaclava  in 
much  the  same  spirit  as  they  assist  at  a  per- 
formance of  the  Lyons  Mail.  Persons  of 
substance  take  in  the  Times  and  sit  com- 
posedly in  pit  or  boxes  according  to  the 
degree  of  their  prosperity  in  business.  As 
for  the  generals  who  go  galloping  up 
and  down  among  bomb-shells  in  absurd 
cocked  hats — as  for  the  actors  who  raddle 
their  faces  and  demean  themselves  for  hire 
upon  the  stage — they  must  belong,  thank 
God  !  to  a  different  order  of  beings,  whom 
we  watch  as  we  watch  the  clouds  careering 
in  the  windy,  bottomless  inane,  or  read  about 


Crabbed  Age  and  Youth  85 

like  characters  in  ancient  and  rather  fabulous 
annals.  Our  offspring  would  no  more  think 
cf  copying  their  behaviour,  let  us  hope,  than 
of  doffing  their  clothes  and  painting  them- 
selves blue  in  consequence  of  certain  admis- 
sions in  the  first  chapter  of  their  school  history 
of  England. 

Discredited  as  they  are  in  practice,  the 
cowardly  proverbs  hold  their  own  in  theory  ; 
and  it  is  another  instance  of  the  same  spirit, 
that  the  opinions  of  old  men  about  life  have 
been  accepted  as  final.  All  sorts  of  allow- 
ances are  made  for  the  illusions  of  youth  ; 
and  none,  or  almost  none,  for  the  disenchant- 
ments  of  age.  It  is  held  to  be  a  good  taunt, 
and  somehow  or  other  to  clinch  the  question 
logically,  when  an  old  gentleman  waggles 
his  head  and  says  :  "  Ah,  so  I  thought  when 
I  was  your  age."  It  is  not  thought  an 
ansv/er  at  all,  if  the  young  man  retorts  : 
"  My  venerable  sir,  so  I  shall  most  probably 
think  when  I  am  yours."  And  yet  the  one 
is  as  good  as  the  other :  pass  for  pass,  tit 
for  tat,  a  Roland  for  an  Oliver. 


86  Crabbed  Age  and  Youth 

"  Opinion  in  good  men,"  says  Milton,  "  ia 
but  knowledge  in  the  making."  All  opinions, 
properly  so  called,  are  stages  on  the  road  to 
truth.  It  does  not  follow  that  a  man  will 
travel  any  further  ;  but  if  he  has  really  con- 
sidered the  world  and  drawn  a  conclusion, 
he  has  travelled  as  far.  This  does  not  apply 
to  formulae  got  by  rote,  v/hich  are  stages  on 
the  road  to  nowhere  but  second  childhood 
and  the  grave.  To  have  a  catchword  in 
your  mouth  is  not  the  same  thing  as  to  hold 
an  opinion  ;  still  less  is  it  the  same  thing  as 
to  have  made  one  for  yourself  There  are 
too  many  of  these  catchwords  in  the  world 
for  people  to  rap  out  upon  you  like  an  oath 
and  by  way  of  an  argument.  They  have  a 
currency  as  intellectual  counters  ;  and  many 
respectable  persons  pay  their  way  with 
nothing  else.  They  seem  to  stand  for  vague 
bodies  of  theory  in  the  background.  The 
imputed  virtue  of  folios  full  of  knockdown 
arguments  is  supposed  to  reside  in  them, 
just  as  some  of  the  majesty  of  the  British 
Empire  dwells  in  the  constable's  truncheon 


Crabbed  Age  and  Youth  87 

They  are  used  in   pure  superstition,  as  old 
clodhoppers     spoil     Latin     by    way    of    an 
exorcism.      And  yet  they  are  vastly  service- 
able for  checking  unprofitable  discussion  and 
stopping  the  mouths  of  babes  and  sucklings. 
And  when  a  young  man  comes  to  a  certain 
stage  of  intellectual  growth,  the  examination 
of  these  counters  forms  a  gymnastic  at  once 
amusing  and  fortifying  to  the  mind. 
'    Because   I   have  reached   Paris,  I  am   not 
ashamed  of  having  passed  through  Newhaven 
and   Dieppe.      They  were  very  good  places 
to  pass  through,  and  I  am  none  the  less  at 
my  destination.     All  my  old  opinions  were 
only  stages  on  the  way  to  the  one   I   now 
hold,  as  itself  is  only  a  stage  on  the  way  to 
something    else.       I    am    no  more    abashed 
at   having   been  a  red-hot    Socialist  with   a 
panacea  of  my  own  than   at  having  been   a 
sucking  infant.      Doubtless  the  world  is  quite 
right  in  a  million  ways  ;  but  you  have  to  be 
kicked  about  a  little  to  convince  you  of  the 
fact      And  in   the   meanwhile  you  must  do 
something,  be  :;omething,  believe  something. 


88  Crabbed  Age  and  Youth 

[t  is  not  possible  to  keep  the  mind  in  a  state 
of  accurate  balance  and  blank ;  and  even  if 
you  could  do  so,  instead  of  coming  ultimately 
to  the  right  conclusion,  you  would  be  ver}, 
apt  to  remain  in  a  state  of  balance  and  blank 
to  perpetuity.  Even  in  quite  intermediate 
stages,  a  dash  of  enthusiasm  is  not  a  thing 
to  be  ashamed  of  in  the  retrospect :  if  St. 
Paul  had  not  been  a  very  zealous  Pharisee, 
he  would  have  been  a  colder  Christian.  For 
my  part,  I  look  back  to  the  time  when  I  was 
a  Socialist  with  something  like  regret.  I  have 
convinced  myself  (for  the  moment)  that  we 
had  better  leave  these  great  changes  to  what 
we  call  great  blind  forces :  their  blindness 
being  so  much  more  perspicacious  than  the 
little,  peering,  partial  eyesight  of  men.  I 
seem  to  see  that  my  own  scheme  would  not 
answer ;  and  all  the  other  schemes  I  ever 
heard  propounded  would  depress  some  ele- 
ments of  goodness  just  as  much  as  Lhey 
encouraged  others.  Now  I  know  that  in 
thus  turning  Conservative  with  years,  I  am 
going  through  the  normal  cycle  of  change 


Crabbed  Age  and  Youth  89 

and  travelling  in  the  common  orbit  of  men's 
opinions.  I  submit  to  this,  as  I  would 
submit  to  gout  or  gray  hair,  as  a  concomi- 
tant of  growing  age  or  else  of  failing  animal 
heat ;  but  I  do  not  acknowledge  that  it 
is  necessarily  a  change  for  the  better — I 
daresay  it  is  deplorably  for  the  worse.  I 
have  no  choice  in  the  business,  and  can  no 
more  resist  this  tendency  of  my  mind  than 
I  could  prevent  my  body  from  beginning  to 
totter  and  decay.  If  I  am  spared  (as  the 
phrase  runs)  I  shall  doubtless  outlive  some 
troublesome  desires  ;  but  I  am  in  no  hurry 
about  that ;  nor,  when  the  time  comes,  shall 
I  plume  myself  on  the  immunity.  Just  in 
the  same  way,  I  do  not  greatly  pride  myself 
on  having  outlived  my  belief  in  the  fairy  tales 
of  Socialism.  Old  people  have  faults  of  their 
own ;  they  tend  to  become  cowardly,  niggardly, 
and  suspicious.  Whether  from  the  growth 
of  experience  or  the  decline  of  animal  heat, 
I  see  that  age  leads  to  these  and  certain  other 
faults  ;  and  it  follows,  of  course,  that  while  in 
one  sense  I  hope  I  am  journeying  towards  the 


90  Crabbed  Age  and  Youth 

truth,  in  another   I    am  indubitably  posting 
towards  these  forms  and  sources  of  error. 

As  we  go  catching  and  catching  at  this  or 
that  corner  of  knowledge,  now  getting  a  fore- 
sight of  generous  possibilities,  now  chilled 
with  a  glimpse  of  prudence,  we  may  compare 
the  headlong  course  of  our  years  to  a  swift 
torrent  in  which  a  man  is  carried  away  ;  now 
he  is  dashed  against  a  boulder,  now  he 
grapples  for  a  moment  to  a  trailing  spray  ; 
at  the  end,  he  is  hurled  out  and  overwhelmed 
in  a  dark  and  bottomless  ocean.  We  have 
no  more  than  glimpses  and  touches  ;  we  are 
torn  away  from  our  theories  ;  we  are  spun 
round  and  round  and  shown  this  or  the  other 
view  of  life,  until  only  fools  or  knaves  can 
hold  to  their  opinions.  We  take  a  sight  at 
a  condition  in  life,  and  say  we  have  studied 
it  ;  our  most  elaborate  view  is  no  more  than 
an  impression.  If  we  had  breathing  space, 
we  should  take  the  occasion  to  modify  and 
adjust  ;  but  at  this  breakneck  hurry,  we  are 
no  sooner  boys  than  we  are  adult,  no  sooner 
in  love  than  married  or  jilted,  no  sooner  one 


Crabbed  Age  and  Youth  9 1 

age  than  we  begin  to  be  another,  and  no 
sooner  in  the  fulness  of  our  manhood  than 
we  begin  to  decline  towards  the  grave.  It 
is  in  vain  to  seek  for  consistency  or  expect 
clear  and  stable  views  in  a  medium  so  per- 
turbed and  fleeting.  This  is  no  cabinet 
science,  in  which  things  are  tested  to  a 
scruple ;  we  theorise  with  a  pistol  to  our 
head  ;  we  are  confronted  with  a  new  set  ot 
conditions  on  which  we  have  not  only  to 
pass  a  judgment,  but  to  take  action,  before 
the  hour  is  at  an  end.  And  we  cannot  even 
regard  ourselves  as  a  constant ;  in  this  flux 
of  things,  our  identity  itself  seems  in  a  per- 
petual variation  ;  and  not  infrequently  we 
find  our  own  disguise  the  strangest  in  the 
masquerade.  In  the  course  of  time,  we 
grow  to  love  things  we  hated  and  hate  things 
we  loved.  Milton  is  not  so  dull  as  he  once 
was,  nor  perhaps  Ainsworth  so  amusing.  It 
is  decidedly  harder  to  climb  trees,  and  not 
nearly  so  hard  to  sit  still.  There  is  no  use 
pretending  ;  even  the  thrice  royal  game  of 
hide    and    seek    has    somehow    lost    in    zest 


92  Crabbed  Age  and  Youth 

All  our  attributes  are  modified  or  changed ; 
and  it  will  be  a  poor  account  of  us  if  our 
views  do  not  modify  and  change  in  a  propor- 
tion. To  hold  the  same  views  at  forty  as 
we  held  at  twenty  is  to  have  been  stupefied 
for  a  score  of  years,  and  take  rank,  not  as  a 
prophet,  but  as  an  unteachable  brat,  well 
birched  and  none  the  wiser.  It  is  as  if  a 
ship  captain  should  sail  to  India  from  the 
Port  of  London  ;  and  having  brought  a  chart 
of  the  Thames  on  deck  at  his  first  setting 
out,  should  obstinately  use  no  other  for  the 
whole  voyage. 

And  mark  you,  it  would  be  no  less  foolish 
to  begin  at  Gravesend  with  a  chart  of  the 
Red  Sea.  Si  Jeunesse  savait,  si  Vieillcsse 
pouvait,  is  a  very  pretty  sentiment,  but  not 
necessarily  right.  In  five  cases  out  of  ten, 
it  is  not  so  much  that  the  young  people  do 
not  know,  as  that  they  do  not  choose.  There 
is  something  irreverent  in  the  speculation, 
but  perhaps  the  want  of  power  has  more  to 
do  with  the  wise  resolutions  of  age  than  we 
aie  always  willing  to  admit.      It  would   be 


Crabbed  Age  and  Youth  93 

an  instructive  experiment  to  make  an  old 
man  young  again  and  leave  him  all  his 
savoir.  I  scarcely  think  he  would  put  his 
money  in  the  Savings  Bank  after  all  ;  I 
doubt  if  he  would  be  such  an  admirable  son 
as  we  are  led  to  expect  ;  and  as  for  his  con- 
duct in  love,  I  believe  firmly  he  would  out- 
Herod  Herod,  and  put  the  whole  of  his  new 
compeers  to  the  blush.  Prudence  is  a  wooden 
Juggernaut,  before  whom  Benjamin  Franklin 
walks  with  the  portly  air  of  a  high  priest, 
and  after  whom  dances  many  a  successful 
merchant  in  the  character  of  Atys.  But  it 
is  not  a  deity  to  cultivate  in  youth.  If  a 
man  lives  to  any  considerable  age,  it  cannot 
be  denied  that  he  laments  his  imprudences, 
but  I  notice  he  often  laments  his  youth  a 
deal  more  bitterly  and  with  a  more  genuine 
intonation. 

It  is  customary  to  say  that  age  should  be 
considered,  because  it  comes  last.  It  seems 
just  as  much  to  the  point,  that  youth  comes 
first.  And  the  scale  fairly  kicks  the  beam, 
if  you  go  on   to  add  that  age,  in  a  majority 


94  Crabbed  Age  and  Youth 

of  cases,  never  comes  at  all.  Disease  and 
accident  make  short  work  of  even  the  most 
prosperous  persons  ;  death  costs  nothing, 
and  the  expense  of  a  headstone  is  an  incon- 
siderable trifle  to  the  happy  heir.  To  be 
suddenly  snuffed  out  in  the  middle  of  ambi- 
tious schemes,  is  tragical  enough  at  best ; 
but  when  a  man  has  been  grudging  himself 
his  own  life  in  the  meanwhile,  and  saving  up 
everything  for  the  festival  that  was  never  to 
be,  it  becomes  that  hysterically  moving  sort 
of  tragedy  which  lies  on  the  confines  of  farce. 
The  victim  is  dead — and  he  has  cunningly 
overreached  himself:  a  combination  of  ca- 
lamities none  the  less  absurd  for  being  grim. 
To  husband  a  favourite  claret  until  the  batch 
turns  sour,  is  not  at  all  an  artful  stroke  of 
policy  ;  and  how  much  more  with  a  whole 
cellar — a  whole  bodily  existence !  People 
may  lay  down  their  lives  with  cheerfulness 
in  the  sure  expectation  of  a  blessed  immor- 
tality ;  but  that  is  a  different  affair  from 
1  giving  up  youth  with  all  its  admirable 
pleasures,  in  the  hope  of  a  better  quality  ol 


V 


Crabbed  Age  and  Youth  95 

gruel  in  a  more  than  problematical,  nay, 
more  than  improbable,  old  age.  We  should 
not  compliment  a  hungry  man,  who  should 
refuse  a  whole  dinner  and  reserve  all  his 
appetite  for  the  dessert,  before  he  knew 
whether  there  was  to  be  any  dessert  or  not. 
If  there  be  such  a  thing  as  imprudence  in 
the  world,  we  surely  have  it  here.  We  sail 
in  leaky  bottoms  and  on  great  and  perilous 
waters  ;  and  to  take  a  cue  from  the  dolorous 
old  naval  ballad,  we  have  heard  the  mer- 
maidens  singing,  and  know  that  we  shall 
never  see  dry  land  any  more.  Old  and 
young,  we  are  all  on  our  last  cruise.  If 
there  is  a  fill  of  tobacco  among  the  crew,  for 
God's  sake  pass  it  round,  and  let  us  have  a 
pipe  before  we  go  ! 

Indeed,  by  the  report  of  our  elders,  this 
neivous  preparation  for  old  age  is  only 
trouble  thrown  away.  We  fall  on  guard, 
and  after  all  it  is  a  friend  who  comes  to 
meet  us.  After  the  sun  is  down  and  the 
west  faded,  the  heavens  begin  to  fill  with 
shining  stars.      So,  as  we  grow  old,  a  sort  of 


96  Crabbed  Age  and  Yoitth 

equable  jog-trot  of  feeling  is  substituted  for 
the  violent  ups  and  downs  of  passion  and 
disgust ;  the  same  influence  that  restrains 
our  hopes,  quiets  our  apprehensions  ;  if  the 
pleasures  are  less  intense,  the  troubles  are 
milder  and  more  tolerable  ;  and  in  a  word, 
this  period  for  which  we  are  asked  to  hoard 
up  everything  as  for  a  time  of  famine,  is,  in 
its  own  right,  the  richest,  easiest,  and  happiest 
of  life.  Nay,  by  managing  its  own  work  and 
following  its  own  happy  inspiration,  youth  is 
doing  the  best  it  can  to  endow  the  leisure  of 
age.  A  full,  busy  youth  is  your  only  prelude 
to  a  self-contained  and  independent  age  ; 
and  the  muff  inevitably  develops  into  the  bore. 
There  are  not  many  Doctor  Johnsons,  to 
set  forth  upon  their  first  romantic  voyage  at 
sixty- four.  If  we  wish  to  scale  Mont  Blanc 
or  visit  a  thieves'  kitchen  in  the  East  End, 
to  go  down  in  a  diving  dress  or  up  in  a 
balloon,  we  must  be  about  it  while  we  are 
still  young.  It  will  not  do  to  delay  until  we 
are  clogged  with  prudence  and  limping  with 
rheumatism,   and   people   begin   to   ask   us; 


Crabbed  Age  and  Youth  97 

"What  does  Gravity  out  of  bed?"     Youth 
is  the  time  to  go  flashing  from  one  end  of 
the  world   to  the  other  both   in   mind   and 
body ;     to     try    the     manners    of    different 
nations  ;   to  hear  the   chimes   at   midnight ; 
to  see  sunrise  in  town  and  country  ;  to  be 
converted   at    a  revival  ;    to   circumnavigate 
the  metaphysics,  write  halting  verses,  run   a 
mile  to  see  a  fire,  and   wait  all  day  long  in 
the   theatre   to  applaud  Hernani.     There  is 
some  meaning  in  the  old  theory  about  wild 
oats  ;  and  a  man  who  has  not  had  his  green- 
sickness and  got  done  with  it  for  good,  is  as 
little  to  be  depended  on  as  an  unvaccinated 
infant.       "  It    is    extraordinary,"    says    Lord 
Beaconsfield,  one  of  the  brightest  and  best 
preserved  of  youths  up  to  the  date  of  his  last 
novel,^  "  it  is  extraordinary  how  hourly  and 
how  violently  change  the  feelings  of  an  in- 
experienced young  man."     And  this  mobility 
is  a  special  talent  entrusted   to  his  care  ;    a 
sort    of    indestructible    virginity ;     a    magic 
armour,    with    which    he    can    pass    unhurt 

^  Lothair. 
H 


98  Crabbed  Age  and  Youth 

through  great  dangers  and  come  unbedaubec 
out  of  the  miriest  passages.  Let  him  voyage 
speculate,  see  all  that  he  can,  do  all  that  he 
may  ;  his  soul  has  as  many  lives  as  a  cat 
he  will  live  in  all  weathers,  and  never  be  a 
halfpenny  the  worse.  Those  who  go  to  the 
devil  in  youth,  with  anything  like  a  fair 
chance,  were  probably  little  worth  saving 
from  the  first ;  they  must  have  been  feeble 
fellows — creatures  made  of  putty  and  pack- 
thread, without  steel  or  fire,  anger  or  true 
joyfulness,  in  their  composition  ;  we  may 
sympathise  with  their  parents,  but  there  is 
not  much  cause  to  go  into  mourning  for 
themselves  ;  for  to  be  quite  honest,  the  weak 
brother  is  the  worst  of  mankind. 

When  the  old  man  waggles  his  head  and 
says,  "  Ah,  so  I  thought  when  I  was  your 
age,"  he  has  proved  the  youth's  case.  Doubt- 
less, whether  from  growth  of  experience  or 
decline  of  animal  heat,  he  thinks  so  no  longer; 
but  he  thought  so  while  he  was  young  ;  and 
all  men  have  thought  so  while  they  were 
young,  since  there  was  dew  in  the  morning 


Crabbed  Age  and  Youth  99 

or  hawthorn  in  May  ;  and  here  is  anothei 
young  man  adding  his  vote  to  those  of  pre- 
vious generations  and  rivetting  another  link 
to  the  chain  of  testimony.  It  is  as  natural 
and  as  right  for  a  young  man  to  be  imprudent 
and  exaggerated,  to  Hve  in  swoops  and  circles, 
and  beat  about  his  cage  like  any  other  wild 
thing  newly  captured,  as  it  is  for  old  men  to 
turn  gray,  or  mothers  to  love  their  offspring, 
or  heroes  to  die  for  something  worthier  than 
their  lives. 

By  way  of  an  apologue  for  the  aged,  when 
they  feel  more  than  usually  tempted  to  offer 
their  advice,  let  me  recommend  the  following 
little  tale.  A  child  who  had  been  remark- 
ably fond  of  toys  (and  in  particular  of  lead 
soldiers)  found  himself  growing  to  the  level 
of  acknowledged  boyhood  without  any  abate- 
ment of  this  childish  taste.  He  was  thirteen; 
already  he  had  been  taunted  for  dallying 
overlong  about  the  playbox  ;  he  had  to  blush 
if  he  was  found  among  his  lead  soldiers  ;  the 
shades  of  the  prison-house  were  closing  about 
him    with   a   vengeance.      There   is   nothing 


I  oo         Crabbed  Age  and  Youth 

more  difficult  than  to  put  the  thoughts  of 
children  into  the  language  of  their  elders  ; 
but  this  is  the  effect  of  his  meditations  at 
this  juncture  :  "  Plainly,"  he  said,  "  I  must 
give  up  my  playthings,  in  the  meanwhile, 
since  I  am  not  in  a  position  to  secure  mysell 
against  idle  jeers.  At  the  same  time,  I  am 
sure  that  playthings  are  the  very  pick  of  life ; 
all  people  give  them  up  out  of  the  same 
pusillanimous  respect  for  those  who  are  a 
little  older  ;  and  if  they  do  not  return  to 
them  as  soon  as  they  can,  it  is  only  because 
they  grow  stupid  and  forget.  I  shall  be 
wiser ;  I  shall  conform  for  a  little  to  the 
ways  of  their  foolish  world  ;  but  so  soon  as 
I  have  made  enough  money,  I  shall  retire 
and  shut  myself  up  among  my  playthings 
until  the  day  I  die."  Nay,  as  he  was  passing 
in  the  train  along  the  Esterel  mountains 
between  Cannes  and  Fr^jus,  he  remarked  a 
pretty  house  in  an  orange  garden  at  the 
angle  of  a  bay,  and  decided  that  this  should 
be  his  Happy  Valley.  Astrea  Redux ; 
childhood  was  to  come  again  1       The  idea 


Crabbed  Age  and  Youth         loi 

has  an  air  of  simple  nobility  to  me,  not 
unworthy  of  Cincinnatus.  And  yet,  as  the 
reader  has  probably  anticipated,  it  is  never 
likely  to  be  carried  into  effect.  There  was  a 
worm  fl^the  bud,  a  fatal  error  m  the  premises. 
Childhood  must  pass  away,  and  then  youth,  as 
surely  as  age  approaches.  The  true  wisdom 
is  to  be  always  seasonable,  and  to  change 
with  a  good  grace  in  changing  circumstances. 
To  love  playthings  well  as  a  child,  to  lead  an 
adventurous  and  honourable  youth,  and  to 
settle  when  the  time  arrives,  into  a  green  and 
smiling  age,  is  to  be  a  good  artist  in  life  and 
deserve  well  of  yourself  and  your  neighbour. 
You  need  repent  none  of  your  youthful 
vagaries.  They  may  have  been  over  the 
score  on  one  side,  just  as  those  of  age  are 
probably  over  the  score  on  the  other.  But 
they  had  a  point  ;  they  not  only  befitted 
your  age  and  expressed  its  attitude  and 
passions,  but  they  had  a  relation  to  what 
was  outside  of  you,  and  implied  criticisms  on 
the  existing  state  of  things,  which  you  need 
not  allow  to  have  been  undeserved,  because 


102         Crabbed  Age  and  Youth 

you  now  see  that  they  were  partial.  All 
error,  not  merely  verbal,  is  a  strong  way  of 
stating  that  the  current  truth  is  incomplete. 
The  follies  of  youth  have  a  basis  in  sound 
reason,  just  as  much  as  the  embarrassing 
questions  put  by  babes  and  sucklings.  Their 
most  antisocial  acts  indicate  the  defects  of 
our  society.  When  the  torrent  sweeps  the 
man  against  a  boulder,  you  must  expect  him 
to  scream,  and  you  need  not  be  surprised  if 
the  scream  is  sometimes  a  theory.  Shelley, 
chafing  at  the  Church  of  England,  discovered 
the  cure  of  all  evils  in  universal  atheism. 
Generous  lads  irritated  at  the  injustices  of 
society,  see  nothing  for  it  but  the  abolish- 
ment of  everything  and  Kingdom  Come  of 
anarchy.  Shelley  was  a  young  fool  ;  so  are 
these  cocksparrow  revolutionaries.  But  it  is 
better  to  be  a  fool  than  to  be  dead.  It  is 
better  to  emit  a  scream  in  the  shape  of  a 
theory  than  to  be  entirely  insensible  to  the 
jars  and  incongruities  of  life  and  take  every- 
thing as  it  comes  in  a  forlorn  stupidity. 
Some  people  swallow  the  universe  like  a  pill; 


Crabbed  Age  and  Youth         103 

they  travel  on  through  the  world,  like  smiling 
images  pushed  from  behind.  For  God's  sake 
give  me  the  young  man  who  has  brains  enough 
to  make  a  fool  of  himself !  As  for  the  others, 
the  irony  of  facts  shall  take  it  out  of  their 
hands,  and  make  fools  of  them  in  downright 
earnest,  ere  the  farce  be  over.  There  shall 
be  such  a  mopping  and  a  mowing  at  the  last 
day,  and  such  blushing  and  confusion  of 
countenance  for  all  those  who  have  been 
wise  in  their  own  esteem,  and  have  not  learnt 
the  rough  lessons  that  youth  hands  on  to 
age.  If  we  are  indeed  here  to  perfect  and 
complete  our  own  natures,  and  grow  larger, 
stronger,  and  more  sympathetic  against  some 
nobler  career  in  the  future,  we  had  all  best 
bestir  ourselves  to  the  utmost  while  we  have 
the  time.  To  equip  a  dull,  respectable  person 
with  wings  would  be  but  to  make  a  parody 
of  an  angel.  * 

y  In  short,  if  youth  is  not  quite  right  in  its 
opinions,  there  is  a  strong  probability  that 
age  is  not  much  more  so.  Undying  hope  is 
co-ruler  of  the  human  bosom  with  infallible 


104         i^rabbed  Age  and  Youth 

credulity.  A  man  finds  he  has  been  wrong 
at  every  preceding  stage  of  his  career,  only 
to  deduce  the  astonishing  conclusion  that  he 
is  at  last  entirely  right.  Mankind,  aftef 
centuries  of  failure,  are  still  upon  the  eve 
of  a  thoroughly  constitutional  millennium. 
Since  we  have  explored  the  maze  so  long 
without  result,  it  follows,  for  poor  human 
reason,  that  we  cannot  have  to  explore  much 
longer  ;  close  by  must  be  the  centre,  with  a 
champagne  luncheon  and  a  piece  of  orna- 
mental water.  How  if  there  were  no  centre 
at  all,  but  just  one  alley  after  another,  and 
the  whole  world  a  labyrinth  without  end  or 
issue  ? 

I  overheard  the  other  day  a  scrap  of  con- 
versation, which  I  take  the  liberty  to  repro- 
duce. "What  I  advance  is  true,"  said  one. 
"  But  not  the  whole  truth,"  answered  the 
other.  "  Sir,"  returned  the  first  (and  it 
seemed  to  me  there  was  a  smack  of  Dr. 
Johnson  in  the  speech),  "  Sir,  there  is  no 
such  thing  as  the  whole  truth!"  Indeed, 
there  is  nothing  so  evident  in   life   as   that 


Crabbed  Age  and  Youth         105 

thcTie  are  two  sides  to  a  question.  History 
is  one  long  illustration.  The  forces  of  nature 
are  engaged,  day  by  day,  in  cudgelling  it 
into  our  backward  intelligences.  We  never 
pause  for  a  moment's  consideration,  but  we 
admit  it  as  an  axiom.  An  enthusiast  sways 
humanity  exactly  by  disregarding  this  great 
truth,  and  dinning  it  into  our  ears  that  this 
or  that  question  has  only  one  possible  solu- 
tion ;  and  your  enthusiast  is  a  fine  florid 
fellow,  dominates  things  for  a  while  and 
shakes  the  world  out  of  a  doze  ;  but  when 
once  he  is  gone,  an  army  of  quiet  and  unin- 
fluential  people  set  to  work  to  remind  us  of 
the  other  side  and  demolish  the  generous 
imposture.  While  Calvin  is  putting  every- 
body exactly  right  in  his  Institutes,  and  hot- 
headed Knox  is  thundering  in  the  pulpit, 
Montaigne  is  already  looking  at  the  other 
side  ir  his  library  in  Perigord,  and  predicting 
that  they  will  find  as  much  to  quarrel  about 
in  the  Bible  as  they  had  found  already  in 
the  Church.  Age  may  have  one  side,  but 
assuredly  Youth   has  the  other.      There   is 


1  o6         Crabbed  Age  and  Youth 

nothing  more  certain  than  that  both  are  right, 
except  perhaps  that  both  are  wrong.  Let 
them  agree  to  differ ;  for  who  knows  but 
what  agreeing  to  differ  may  not  be  a  form 
of  agreement  rather  than  a  form  of  differ- 
ence ? 

I  suppose  it  is  written  that  any  one  who 
sets  up  for  a  bit  of  a  philosopher,  must  con- 
tradict himself  to  his  very  face.  For  here 
have  I  fairly  talked  myself  into  thinking  that 
we  have  the  whole  thing  before  us  at  last ; 
that  there  is  no  answer  to  the  mystery, 
except  that  there  are  as  many  as  you  please  , 
that  there  is  no  centre  to  the  maze  because, 
like  the  famous  sphere,  its  centre  is  every- 
where ;  and  that  agreeing  to  differ  with 
every  ceremony  of  politeness,  is  the  only 
"  one  undisturbed  song  of  pure  concent "  to 
which  we  are  ever  likely  to  lend  our  musical 
voices. 


AN  APOLOGY  FOR  IDLERS 

*'  Bos  WELL  :  We  grow  weary  when  idle. 

"Johnson  :  That  is,  sir,  because  others  being  busy,  we 
want  company  ;  but  if  we  were  idle,  there  would  be  no 
growing  weary  ;  we  should  all  entertain  one  another." 

T  UST  now,  when  every  one  is  bound,  under 
pain  of  a  decree  in  absence  convicting 
them  of  /(jj^'-respectability,  to  enter  on  some 
lucrative  profession,  and  labour  therein  with 
something  not  far  short  of  enthusiasm,  a  cry 
from  the  opposite  party  who  are  content 
when  they  have  enough,  and  like  to  look  on 
and  enjoy  in  the  meanwhile,  savours  a  little 
of  bravado  and  gasconade.  And  yet  this 
should  not  be.  Idleness  so  called,  which 
does  not  consist  in  doing  nothing,  but  in 
doing  a  great  deal  not  recognised  in  the 
dogmatic  formularies  of  the  ruling  class,  has 


io8  An  Apology  for  Idlers 

as  good  a  right  to  state  its  position  as 
industry  itself.  It  is  admitted  that  the 
presence  of  people  who  refuse  to  enter  in  the 
great  handicap  race  for  sixpenny  pieces,  is 
at  once  an  insult  and  a  disenchantment  for 
those  who  do.  A  fine  fellow  (as  we  see  so 
many)  takes  his  determination,  votes  for  the 
sixpences,  and  in  the  emphatic  Americanism, 
"  goes  for  "  them.  And  while  such  an  one 
is  ploughing  distressfully  up  the  road,  it  is 
not  hard  to  understand  his  resentment,  when 
he  perceives  cool  persons  in  the  meadows  by 
the  wayside,  lying  with  a  handkerchief  over 
their  ears  and  a  glass  at  their  elbow.  Alex- 
ander is  touched  in  a  very  delicate  place  by 
the  disregard  of  Diogenes.  Where  was  the 
glory  of  having  taken  Rome  for  these  tumult- 
uous barbarians,  who  poured  into  the  Senate 
house,  and  found  the  Fathers  sitting  silent 
and  unmoved  by  their  success  ?  It  is  a  sore 
thing  to  have  laboured  along  and  scaled  the 
arduous  hilltops,  and  when  all  is  done,  find 
humanity  indifferent  to  your  achievement 
Hence   physicists  condemn  the  unphysical ; 


A  n  Apology  for  Idlers  109 

financiers  have  only  a  superficial  toleration 
for  those  who  know  little  of  stocks  ;  literary 
persons  despise  the  unlettered  ;  and  people 
of  all  pursuits  combine  to  disparage  those 
who  have  none. 

But  though  this  is  one  difficulty  of  the 
subject,  it  is  not  the  greatest  You  could 
not  be  put  in  prison  for  speaking  against 
industry,  but  you  can  be  sent  to  Coventry 
for  speaking  like  a  fool.  The  greatest 
difficulty  with  most  subjects  is  to  do  them 
well  ;  therefore,  please  to  remember  this  is 
an  apology.  It  is  certain  that  much  may 
be  judiciously  argued  in  favour  of  diligence  ; 
only  there  is  something  to  be  said  against  it, 
and  that  is  what,  on  the  present  occasion,  I 
have  to  say.,  To  state  one  argument  is  not 
necessarily  to  be  deaf  to  all  others,  and  that 
a  man  has  written  a  book  of  travels  in 
Montenegro,  is  no  reason  why  he  should 
never  have  been  to  Richmond. 

It  is  surely  beyond  a  doubt  that  people 
should  be  a  good  deal  idle  in  youth.  For 
though  here  and  there  a  Lord  Macaulay  may 


no  An  Apology  for  Idlers 

escape  from  school  honours  with  all  his  wits 
about  him,  most  boys  pay  so  dear  for  their 
medals  that  they  never  afterwards  have  a 
shot  in  their  locker,  and  begin  the  world 
bankrupt  And  the  same  holds  true  during 
all  the  time  a  lad  is  educating  himself,  or 
suffering  others  to  educate  him.  It  must 
have  been  a  very  foolish  old  gentleman  who 
addressed  Johnson  at  Oxford  in  these  words  : 
"  Young  man,  ply  your  book  diligently  now, 
and  acquire  a  stock  of  knowledge  ;  for  when 
years  come  upon  you,  you  will  find  thai 
poring  upon  books  will  be  but  an  irksome 
task."  The  old  gentleman  seems  to  have 
been  unaware  that  many  other  things  besides 
reading  grow  irksome,  and  not  a  few  become 
impossible,  by  the  time  a  man  has  to  use 
spectacles  and  cannot  walk  without  a  stick. 
Books  are  good  enough  in  their  own  way, 
but  they  are  a  mighty  bloodless  substitute 
for  life.  It  seems  a  pity  to  sit,  like  the  Lady 
of  Shalott,  peering  into  a  mirror,  with  your 
back  turned  on  all  the  bustle  and  glamour  of 
reality.     And  if  a  man  reads  very  hard,  as 


An  Apology  for  Idlers         1 1 1 

the  old  anecdote  reminds  us,  he  will   have 
little  time  for  thought. 

If  you  look  back  on  your  own  education, 
I  am  sure  it  will  not  be  the  full,  vivid,  in- 
structive hours  of  truantry  that  you  regret ; 
you  would  rather  cancel  some  lack-lustre 
periods  between  sleep  and  waking  in  the 
class.  For  my  own  part,  I  have  attended  a 
good  many  lectures  in  my  time.  I  still 
remember  that  the  spinning  of  a  top  is  a 
case  of  Kinetic  Stability.  I  still  remember 
that  Emphyteusis  is  not  a  disease,  nor  Stilli- 
cide  a  crime.  But  though  I  would  not 
willingly  part  with  such  scraps  of  science,  I 
do  not  set  the  same  store  by  them  as  by 
certain  other  odds  and  ends  that  I  came  by 
in  the  open  street  while  I  was  playing  truant. 
This  is  not  the  moment  to  dilate  on  that 
mighty  place  of  education,  which  was  the 
favourite  school  of  Dickens  and  of  Balzac, 
and  turns  out  yearly  many  inglorious  masters 
in  the  Science  of  the  Aspects  of  Life.  Suffice 
it  to  say  this  :  if  a  lad  does  not  learn  in  the 
streets,  it   is   because  he  has  nc    faculty  of 


112  Aft  Apology  for  Idlers 

learning.  Nor  is  the  truant  always  in  the 
streets,  for  if  he  prefers,  he  may  go  out  by 
the  gardened  suburbs  into  the  country.  He 
may  pitch  on  some  tuft  of  lilacs  over  a  burn, 
and  smoke  innumerable  pipes  to  the  tune  of 
the  water  on  the  stones.  A  bird  will  sing 
in  the  thicket.  And  there  he  may  fall  into 
a  vein  of  kindly  thought,  and  see  things  in 
a  new  perspective.  Why,  if  this  be  not 
education,  what  is  ?  We  may  conceive  Mr. 
Worldly  Wiseman  accosting  such  an  one, 
and  the  conversation  that  should  thereupon 
ensue  : — 

"  How  now,  young  fellow,  what  dost  thou 
here  ?  " 

"  Truly,  sir,  I  take  mine  ease." 

"  Is  not  this  the  hour  of  the  class  ?  and 
should'st  thou  not  be  plying  thy  Book  with 
diligence,  to  the  end  thou  mayest  obtain 
knowledge  ?  " 

"  Nay,  but  thus  also  I  follow  after  Learn- 
ing, by  your  leave." 

"  Learning,  quotha  !  After  what  fashioi^ 
I  pray  thee  ?     Is  it  mathematics  ?" 


An  Apology  for  Idlers  1 13 

*  No,  to  be  sure." 

"  Is  it  metaphysics  ?** 

"  Nor  that." 

"  Is  it  some  language  ?" 

**  Nay,  it  is  no  language." 

"Is  it  a  trade?" 

"  Nor  a  trade  neither." 

"  Why,  then,  what  is't  ?" 

"  Indeed,  sir,  as  a  time  may  soon  come  for 
me  to  go  upon  Pilgrimage,  I  am  desirous  to 
note  what  is  commonly  done  by  persons  in 
my  case,  and  where  are  the  ugliest  Sloughs 
and  Thickets  on  the  Road  ;  as  also,  what 
manner  of  Staff  is  of  the  best  service. 
Moreover,  I  lie  here,  by  this  water,  to  learn 
by  root-of-heart  a  lesson  which  my  master 
teaches  me  to  call  Peace,  or  Contentment." 

Hereupon  Mr.  Worldly  Wiseman  was 
much  commoved  with  passion,  and  shaking 
his  cane  with  a  very  threatful  countenance, 
broke  forth  upon  this  wise  :  "  Learning, 
quotha !"  said  he  ;  "I  would  have  all  such 
rogues  scourged  by  the  Hangman  1" 

And  so  he  would  go  his  way,  ruffling  out 


114  ^^  Apology  for  Idlers 

his  cravat  with  a  crackle  of  starch,  like  a 
turkey  when  it  spread  its  feathers. 

Now  this,  of  Mr.  Wiseman's,  is  the  common 
opinion,      A  fact  is  not  called  a  fact,  but  a 
piece  of  gossip,  if  it  does  not  fall  into  one 
of  your   scholastic    categories.      An    inquiry 
must   be    in    some   acknowledged    direction, 
with  a  name  to  go  by  ;  or  else  you  are  not 
inquiring  at  all,  only  lounging  ;  and  the  work- 
house is  too  good   for  you.      It  is  supposed 
that  all   knowledge   is    at   the   bottom  of  a 
well,  or  the  far  end  of  a  telescope.      Sainte- 
Beuve,  as  he  grew  older,  came  to  regard  all 
experience  as  a  single  great  book,  in  which 
o  study  for  a  few  years  ere  we  go  hence  ; 
/  and   it  seemed   all  one  to  him  whether  you 
should    read    in   Chapter   xx.,   which   is   the 
differential    calculus,  or    in    Chapter  xxxix., 
which    is    hearing    the    band    play    in    the 
gardens.      As  a  matter  of  fact  an  intelligent 
person,  looking  out  of  his  eyes  and  hearken- 
ing in  his  ears,  with  a  smile  on  his  face  all 
the  time,  will  get  more  true  education  than 
many    another    in    a    life    of    heroic    vigils* 


An  Apology  for  Idlers         1 1 5 

There  is  certainly  some  chill  and  arid  know- 
ledge  to  be  found  upon  the  summits  ol 
formal  and  laborious  science  ;  but  it  is  all 
round  about  you,  and  for  the  trouble  of 
looking,  that  you  will  acquire  the  warm  and 
palpitating  facts  of  life.  While  others  are 
filling  their  memory  with  a  lumber  of  words, 
one-half  of  which  they  will  forget  before  the 
week  be  out,  your  truant  may  learn  some 
really  useful  art :  to  play  the  fiddle,  to  know 
a  good  cigar,  or  to  speak  with  ease  and 
opportunity  to  all  varieties  of  men.  Many 
who  have  "  plied  their  book  diligently,"  and 
know  all  about  some  one  branch  or  another 
of  accepted  lore,  come  out  of  the  study  with 
an  ancient  and  owl -like  demeanour,  and 
prove  dry,  stockish,  and  dyspeptic  in  all 
the  better  and  brighter  parts  of  life.  Many 
make  a  large  fortune,  who  remain  under- 
bred and  pathetically  stupid  to  the  last. 
And  meantime  there  goes  the  idbr,  who 
began  life  along  with  them — by  your  leave, 
a  different  picture.  He  has  had  time  to 
take  care  of  his  health  and  his  spirits  ;  he 


\ 


1 16  An  Apology  for  Idlers 

has  been  a  great  deal  in  the  open  air,  which 
is  the  most  salutary  of  all  things  for  both 
body  and  mind  ;  and  if  he  has  never  read 
the  great  Book  in  very  recondite  places,  he 
has  dipped  into  it  and  skimmed  it  over  to 
excellent  purpose.  Might  not  the  student 
afford  some  Hebrew  roots,  and  the  business 
man  some  of  his  half-crowns,  for  a  share  of 
the  idler's  knowledge  of  life  at  large,  and 
Art  of  Living?  Nay,  and  the  idler  has 
another  and  more  important  quality  than 
these.  I  mean  his  wisdom.  He  who  has 
much  looked  on  at  the  childish  satisfaction 
of  other  people  in  their  hobbies,  will  regard 
his  own  with  only  a  very  ironical  indulgence. 
He  will  not  be  heard  among  the  dogmatists. 
He  will  have  a  great  and  cool  allowance 
for  all  sorts  of  people  and  opinions.  If  he 
finds  no  out-of-the-way  truths,  he  will  identify 
himself  with  no  very  burning  falsehood.  His 
way  takes  him  along  a  by-road,  not  much 
frequented,  but  very  even  and  pleasant, 
which  is  called  Commonplace  Lane,  and 
Beads    to    the    Belvedere    of    Commonsense. 


A  n  Apology  for  Idlers  117 

Thence  he  shall  command  an  agreeable,  if 
no  very  noble  prospect  ;  and  while  others 
behold  the  East  and  West,  the  Devil  and 
the  Sunrise,  he  will  be  contentedly  aware  of 
a  sort  of  morning  hour  upon  all  sublunary 
things,  with  an  army  of  shadows  running 
speedily  and  in  many  different  directions 
into  the  great  daylight  of  Eternity.  The 
shadows  and  the  generations,  the  shrill 
doctors  and  the  plangent  wars,  go  by  into 
ultimate  silence  and  emptiness  ;  but  under- 
neath all  this,  a  man  may  see,  out  of  the 
Belvedere  windows,  much  green  and  peace- 
ful landscape  ;  many  firelit  parlours  ;  good 
people  laughing,  drinking,  and  making  love 
as  they  did  before  the  Flood  or  the  French 
Revolution  ;  and  the  old  shepherd  telling 
his  tale  under  the  hawthorn. 

Extreme  busyness,  whether  at  school  or 
college,  kirk  or  market,  is  a  symptom  of 
deficient  vitality  ;  and  a  faculty  for  idleness 
implies  a  catholic  appetite  and  a  strong  \/ 
sense  of  personal  identity.  There  is  a  sort 
of  dead-alive,  hackneyed  pef)ple  about,  who 


1 1 8  An  Apology  for  Idlers 

are  scarcely  conscious  of  living  except  in 
the  exercise  of  some  conventional  occupation. 
Bring  these  fellows  into  the  country,  or  set 
them  aboard  ship,  and  you  will  see  how 
they  pine  for  their  desk  or  their  study. 
They  have  no  curiosity  ;  they  cannot  give 
themselves  over  to  random  provocations  ; 
they  do  not  take  pleasure  in  the  exercise 
of  their  faculties  for  its  own  sake  ;  and 
unless  Necessity  lays  about  them  with  a 
stick,  they  will  even  stand  still.  It  is  no 
good  speaking  to  such  folk :  they  cannot 
be  idle,  their  nature  is  not  generous  enough  ; 
and  they  pass  those  hours  in  a  sort  of  coma, 
which  are  not  dedicated  to  furious  moiling 
in  the  gold-mill.  When  they  do  not  require 
to  go  to  the  office,  when  they  are  not 
hungry  and  have  no  mind  to  drink,  the 
whole  breathing  world  is  a  blank  to  them. 
\  If  they  have  to  wait  an  hour  or  so  for  a 
train,  they  fall  into  a  stupid  trance  with 
their  eyes  open.  To  see  them,  you  would 
suppose  there  was  nothing  to  look  at  and 
no  one  to  speak  with  ;  you  would   imagine 


An  Apology  for  Idlers  119 

they  were  paralysed  or  alienated  ;  and  yet 
very  possibly  they  are  hard  workers  in  their 
own  way,  and  have  good  eyesight  for  a  flav/ 
in  a  deed  or  a  turn  of  the  market  They 
have  been  to  school  and  college,  but  all  the 
time  they  had  their  eye  on  the  medal  ;  they 
have  gone  about  in  the  world  and  mixed 
with  clever  people,  but  all  the  time  they 
were  thinking  of  their  own  affairs.  As  if 
a  man's  soul  were  not  too  small  to  begin 
with,  they  have  dwarfed  and  narrowed  theirs 
by  a  life  of  all  work  and  no  play ;  until 
here  they  are  at  forty,  with  a  listless  atten- 
tion, a  mind  vacant  of  all  material  ot 
amusement,  and  not  one  thought  to  rub 
against  another,  while  they  wait  for  the 
train.  Before  he  was  breeched,  he  might 
have  clambered  on  the  boxes  ;  when  he  was 
twenty,  he  would  have  stared  at  the  girls  ; 
but  now  the  pipe  is  smoked  out,  the  snuff- 
box empty,  and  my  gent  eman  sits  bolt 
upright  upon  a  bencn,  witp  lamentable  eyes. 
This  does  not  appea  to  rr.j  as  being  Success 
in  Life. 


1 20  An  Apology  for  Idlers 

But  it  is  not  only  the  person  himself  who 
juffers  from  his  busy  habits,  but  his  wife  and 
children,  his  friends  and  relations,  and  down 
to  the  very  people  he  sits  with  in  a  railway 
carriage  or  an  omnibus.  Perpetual  devotion 
to  what  a  man  calls  his  business,  is  only  to 
be  sustained  by  perpetual  neglect  of  many 
other  things.  And  it  is  not  by  any  means 
certain  that  a  man's  business  is  the  most 
important  thing  he  has  to  do.  To  an 
impartial  estimate  it  will  seem  clear  that 
many  of  the  wisest,  most  virtuous,  and  most 
beneficent  parts  that  are  to  be  played  upon 
the  Theatre  of  Life  are  filled  by  gratuitous 
performers,  and  pass,  among  the  world  at 
large,  as  phases  of  idleness.  For  in  that 
Theatre,  not  only  the  walking  gentlemen, 
singing  chambermaids,  and  diligent  fiddlers 
in  the  orchestra,  but  those  who  lock  on  and 
clap  their  hands  from  the  benches,  do  really 
play  a  part  and  fulfil  important  offices 
towards  the  general  result.  You  are  no 
cioubt  very  dependent  on  the  care  of  your 
lavi-yer  and  stockbroker,  of  the  guards  and 


An  Apology  for  Idlers  121 

signalmen  who  convey  you  rapidly  from 
place  to  place,  and  the  policemen  who  walk 
the  streets  for  your  protection  ;  but  is  there 
not  a  thought  of  gratitude  in  your  heart  for 
certain  other  benefactors  who  set  you  smiling 
when  they  fall  in  your  way,  or  season  your 
dinner  with  good  company  ?  Colonel  New- 
come  helped  to  lose  his  friend's  money ; 
Fred  Bayham  had  an  ugly  trick  of  borrowing 
shirts  ;  and  yet  they  were  better  people  to 
fall  among  than  Mr.  Barnes.  And  though 
Falstafif  was  neither  sober  nor  very  honest,  I 
think  I  could  name  one  or  two  long-faced 
Barabbases  whom  the  world  could  better 
have  done  without.  Hazlitt  mentions  that 
he  was  more  sensible  of  obligation  to  North- 
cote,  who  had  never  done  him  anything  he 
could  call  a  service,  than  to  his  whole  circle 
of  ostentatious  friends ;  for  he  thought  a 
good  companion  emphatically  the  greatest 
benefactor.  I  know  there  are  people  in  the 
world  who  cannot  feel  grateful  unless  the 
favour  has  been  done  them  at  the  cost  of 
pain  and   difficulty.      But  this  is  a  churlish 


122  An  Apology  for  Idlers 

disposition.  A  man  may  send  you  sfjc 
sheets  of  letter-paper  covered  with  the  most 
entertaining  gossip,  or  you  may  pass  half  an 
hour  pleasantly,  perhaps  profitably,  over  an 
article  of  his ;  do  you  think  the  service 
would  be  greater,  if  he  had  made  the  manu- 
script in  his  heart's  blood,  like  a  compact 
with  the  devil  ?  Do  you  really  fancy  you 
should  be  more  beholden  to  your  corres- 
pondent, if  he  had  been  damning  you  all 
the  while  for  your  impjQrtunity  ?  Pleasures 
are  more  beneficial  than  duties  because,  like 
the  quality  of  mercy,  they  are  not  strained, 
and  they  are  twice  blest.  There  must  always 
be  two  to  a  kiss,  and  there  may  be  a  score 
in  a  jest ;  but  wherever  there  is  an  element 
of  sacrifice,  the  favour  is  conferred  with  pain, 
and,  among  generous  people,  received  with 
confusion.  There  is  no  duty  we  so  much 
underrate  as  the  duty  of  being  happy.  By 
being  happy,  we  sow  anonymous  benefits 
upon  the  world,  which  remain  unknown  even 
to  ourselves,  or  when  they  are  disclosed,  sur« 
prise   nobody   so    much    as    the    benefactqr 


A  n  Apology  for  Idlers  1 2  3 

The  other  day,  a  ragged,  barefoot  boy  ran 
down  the  street  after  a  marble,  with  so  jolly 
an  air  that  he  set  every  one  he  passed  into  a 
good  humour ;  one  of  these  persons,  who 
had  been  delivered  from  more  than  usually 
black  thoughts,  stopped  the  little  fellow  and 
gave  him  some  money  with  this  remark : 
"  You  see  what  sometimes  comes  of  looking 
pleased."  If  he  had  looked  pleased  before, 
he  had  now  to  look  both  pleased  and  mysti- 
fied. For  my  part,  I  justify  this  encourage- 
ment of  smiling  rather  than  tearful  children  ; 
I  do  not  wish  to  pay  for  tears  anywhere  but 
upon  the  stage  ;  but  I  am  prepared  to  deal 
largely  in  the  opposite  commodity.  A  happy 
man  or  woman  is  a  better  thing  to  find  than 
a  five-pound  note.  He  or  she  is  a  radiating 
focus  of  goodwill  ;  and  their  entrance  into  a 
room  is  as  though  another  candle  had  been 
lighted.  We  need  not  care  whether  they 
could  prove  the  forty -seventh  proposition  ; 
they  do  a  better  thing  than  that,  they  prac- 
tically demonstrate  the  great  Theorem  of  the 
Liveableness   of   Life.       Consequently,   if   a 


124  ■^1''  Apology  for  Idlers 

person  cannot  be  happy  without  remaining 
idle,  idle  he  should  remain.  It  is  a  revolu- 
tionary precept ;  but  thanks  to  hunger  and 
the  workhouse,  one  not  easily  to  be  abused  ; 
and  within  practical  limits,  it  is  one  of  the 
most  incontestable  truths  in  the  whole  Body 
of  Morality.  Look  at  one  of  your  industrious 
fellows  for  a  moment,  I  beseech  you.  He 
sows  hurry  and  reaps  indigestion  ;  he  puts 
a  vast  deal  of  activity  out  to  interest,  and 
receives  a  large  measure  of  nervous  derange- 
ment in  return.  Either  he  absents  himself 
entirely  from  all  fellowship,  and  lives  a 
recluse  in  a  garret,  with  carpet  slippers  and 
a  leaden  inkpot  ;  or  he  comes  among  people 
swiftly  and  bitterly,  in  a  contraction  of  his 
whole  nervous  system,  to  discharge  some 
temper  before  he  returns  to  work.  I  do  not 
care  how  much  or  how  well  he  works,  this 
fellow  is  an  evil  feature  in  other  people's 
lives.  They  would  be  happier  if  he  were 
dead.  They  could  easier  do  without  his 
services  in  the  Circumlocution  Office,  than 
they  can  tolerate   his  fractious  spirits.      He 


A  n  Apology  for  Idlers  1 2  5 

poisons  life  at  the  well-head.  It  is  better  to 
be  beggared  out  of  hand  by  a  scapegrace 
nephew,  than  daily  hag-ridden  by  a  peevish 
uncle.  ^ 

And  what,  in  God's  name,  is  all  this 
pother  about  ?  For  what  cause  do  they 
embitter  their  own  and  other  people's  lives  ? 
That  a  man  should  publish  three  or  thirty 
articles  a  year,  that  he  should  finish  or  not 
finish  his  great  allegorical  picture,  are  ques- 
tions of  little  interest  to  the  world.  The 
ranks  of  life  are  full  ;  and  although  a  thou- 
sand fall,  there  are  always  some  to  go  into 
the  breach.  When  they  told  Joan  of  Arc 
she  should  be  at  home  minding  women's 
work,  she  answered  there  were  plenty  to  spin 
and  wash.  And  so,  even  with  your  own  rare 
gifts !  When  nature  is  "  so  careless  of  the 
single  life,"  why  should  we  coddle  ourselves 
into  the  fancy  that  our  own  is  of  exceptional 
importance  ?  Suppose  Shakespeare  had  been 
knocked  on  the  head  some  dark  night  in  Sir 
Thomas  Lucy's  preserves,  the  world  would 
have  wagged  on  better  or  worse,  the  pitcher 


126  An  Apology  for  Idlers 

gone  to  the  well,  the  scythe  to  the  corn,  and 
the  student  to  his  book  ;  and  no  one  been 
any  the  wiser  of  the  loss.      There   are  not 
many  works  extant,  if  you   look  the  alter- 
native all  over,  which  are  worth  the  price  of 
a   pound    of  tobacco   to   a   man    of  limited 
means.      This  is  a  sobering  reflection  for  the 
proudest   of  our   earthly   vanities.      Even    a 
tobacconist  may,  upon  consideration,  find  no 
great   cause    for   personal    vainglory   in    the 
phrase  ;  for  although  tobacco  is  an  admirable 
sedative,  the  qualities  necessary  for  retailing 
it  are  neither  rare  nor  precious  in  themselves. 
Alas  and  alas  I    you   may  take  it  how  you 
will,  but  the  services  of  no  single  individual 
are  indispensable.      Atlas  was  just  a  gentle- 
man with  a  protracted  nightmare !     And  yet 
you  see  merchants  who  go  and  labour  them- 
selves into  a  great  fortune  and  thence  into 
the  bankruptcy  court ;   scribblers  who  keep 
scribbling  at  little  articles  until  their  temper 
is  a  cross  to  all  who  come  about  them,  as 
though  Pharaoh  should  set  the  Israelites  to 
make  a  pin  instead  of  a  pyramid  ;  and   fine 


A  n  Apology  for  Idlers  127 

young  men  who  work  themselves  into  a 
decHne,  and  are  driven  off  in  a  hearse  with 
white  plumes  upon  it.  Would  you  not  sup- 
pose these  persons  had  been  whispered,  by 
the  Master  of  the  Ceremonies,  the  promise  of 
some  momentous  destiny  ?  and  that  this 
lukewarm  bullet  on  which  they  play  their 
farces  was  the  bull's-eye  and  centrepoint  of 
all  the  universe  ?  And  yet  it  is  not  so.  The 
ends  for  which  they  give  away  their  priceless 
youth,  for  all  they  know,  may  be  chimerical 
or  hurtful  ;  the  glory  and  riches  they  expect 
may  never  come,  or  may  find  them  indif- 
ferent ;  and  they  and  the  world  they  inhabit 
are  so  inconsiderable  that  the  mind  freezes 
at  the  thought. 


ORDERED  SOUTH 

T)  Y  a  curious  irony  of  fate,  the  places  to 
which  we  are  sent  when  health  deserts 
us  are  often  singularly  beautiful.  Often,  too, 
they  are  places  we  have  visited  in  former 
years,  or  seen  briefly  in  passing  by,  and  kept 
ever  afterwards  in  pious  memory  ;  and'  we 
please  ourselves  with  the  fancy  that  we  shall 
repeat  many  vivid  and  pleasurable  sensations, 
and  take  up  again  the  thread  of  our  enjoy- 
ment in  the  same  spirit  as  we  let  it  fall.  We 
shall  now  have  an  opportunity  of  finishing 
many  pleasant  excursions,  interrupted  of  yore 
before  our  curiosity  was  fully  satisfied.  It 
may  be  that  we  have  kept  in  mind,  during 
all  these  years,  the  recollection  of  some  valley 
into  which  we  have  just  looked  down  for  a 
moment  before  we  lost  sight  of  it  in  the  dis- 


Ordered  South  1 29 

order  of  the  hills ;  it  may  be  that  we  have 
lain  awake  at  night,  and  agreeably  tantalised 
ourselves  with  the  thought  of  corners  we  had 
never  turned,  or  summits  we  had  all  but 
climbed  :  we  shall  now  be  able,  as  we  tell 
ourselves,  to  complete  all  these  unfinished 
pleasures,  and  pass  beyond  the  barriers  that 
confined  our  recollections. 

The  promise  is  so  great,  and  we  are  all  so 
easily  led  away  when  hope  and  memory  are 
both  in  one  story,  that  I  daresay  the  sick 
man  is  not  very  inconsolable  when  he  receives 
sentence  of  banishment,  and  is  inclined  to 
regard  his  ill-health  as  not  the  least  fortunate 
accident  of  his  life.  Nor  is  he  immediately 
undeceived.  The  stir  and  speed  of  the 
journey,  and  the  restlessness  that  goes  to 
V  bed  with  him  as  he  tries  to  sleep  between 
two  days  of  noisy  progress,  fever  him,  and 
stimulate  his  dull  nerves  into  something  of 
their  old  quickness  and  sensibility.  And  so 
he  can  enjoy  the  faint  autumnal  splendour  of 
the  landscape,  as  he  sees  hill  and  plain,  vine- 
yard and  forest,  clad  in  one  wonderful  glory 

K 

STATPMnSMAISrHOffl.. 


1 30  Ordered  Sotith 

of  fairy  gold,  which  the  first  great  winds  of 
winter  will  transmute,  as  in  the  fable,  into 
withered  leaves.  And  so  too  he  can  enjoy 
the  admirable  brevity  and  simplicity  of  such 
little  glimpses  of  country  and  country  ways 
as  flash  upon  him  through  the  windows  of 
the  train  ;  little  glimpses  that  have  a  char- 
acter all  their  own  ;  sights  seen  as  a  travelling 
swallow  might  see  them  from  the  wing,  or 
Iris  as  she  went  abroad  over  the  land  on 
some  Olympian  errand.  Here  and  there, 
indeed,  a  few  children  huzzah  and  wave  their 
hands  to  the  express ;  but  for  the  most  part, 
it  is  an  interruption  too  brief  and  isolated  to 
attract  much  notice  ;  the  sheep  do  not  cease 
from  browsing  ;  a  girl  sits  balanced  on  the 
projecting  tiller  of  a  canal  boat,  so  precari- 
ously that  it  seems  as  if  a  fly  or  the  splash 
of  a  leaping  fish  would  be  enough  to  over- 
throw the  dainty  equilibrium,  and  yet  all 
these  hundreds  of  tons  of  coal  and  wood  and 
iron  have  been  precipitated  roaring  past  her 
very  ear,  and  there  is  not  a  start,  not  a  tremor, 
not  a  turn  of  the  averted   head,  to  indicate 


Ordered  South  131 

that  she  has  been  even  conscious  of  its 
passage.  Herein,  I  think,  lies  the  chief 
attraction  of  railway  travel.  The  speed  is 
sc  easy,  and  the  train  disturbs  so  little  the 
scenes  through  which  it  takes  us,  that  our 
heart  becomes  full  of  the  placidity  and  still- 
ness of  the  country  ;  and  while  the  body  is 
borne  forward  in  the  flying  chain  of  carriages, 
the  thoughts  alight,  as  the  humour  moves 
them,  at  unfrequented  stations  ;  they  make 
haste  up  the  poplar  alley  that  leads  toward 
the  town  ;  they  are  left  behind  with  the 
signalman  as,  shading  his  eyes  with  his  hand, 
he  watches  the  long  train  sweep  away  into 
the  golden  distance. 

Moreover,  there  is  still  before  the  invalid 
the  shock  of  wonder  and  delight  with  which 
he  will  learn  that  he  has  passed  the  indefin- 
able line  that  separates  South  from  North, 
And  this  is  an  uncertain  moment ;  for  some- 
times the  consciousness  is  forced  upon  him 
early,  on  the  occasion  of  some  slight  associa- 
tion, a  colour,  a  flower,  or  a  scent ;  and 
sometimes  not  until,  one   fine   morning,   he 


132  Ordered  South 

wakes  up  with  the  southern  sunshine  peeping 
through  the  persiennes,  and  the  southern 
patois  confusedly  audible  below  the  windows. 
Whether  it  come  early  or  late,  however,  this 
pleasure  will  not  end  with  the  anticipation, 
as  do  so  many  others  of  the  same  family. 
It  will  leave  him  wider  awake  than  it  found 
him,  and  give  a  new  significance  to  all  he 
may  see  for  many  days  to  come.  There  is 
something  in  the  mere  name  of  the  South 
that  carries  enthusiasm  along  with  it.  At 
the  sound  of  the  word,  he  pricks  up  his  ears  ; 
he  becomes  as  anxious  to  seek  out  beauties 
and  to  get  by  heart  the  permanent  lines  and 
character  of  the  landscape,  as  if  he  had  been 
told  that  it  was  all  his  own — an  estate  out 
of  which  he  had  been  kept  unjustly,  and 
which  he  was  now  to  receive  in  free  and  full 
possession.  Even  those  who  have  never 
been  there  before  feel  as  if  they  had  been  ; 
and  everybody  goes  comparing,  and  seeking 
for  the  familiar,  and  finding  it  with  such 
ecstasies  of  recognition,  that  one  would  think 
they  were  coming  home  after  a  weary  ab- 


Ordered  South  133 

sence,   instead    of   travelling    hourly   farthei 
abroad. 

It  is  only  after  he  is  fairly  arrived  and 
settled  down  in  his  chosen  corner,  that  the 
invalid  begins  to  understand  the  change  that 
has  befallen  him.  Everything  about  him  is 
as  he  had  remembered,  or  as  he  had  antici- 
pated. Here,  at  his  feet,  under  his  eyes,  are 
the  olive  gardens  and  the  blue  sea.  Nothing 
can  change  the  eternal  magnificence  of  form 
of  the  naked  Alps  behind  Mentone  ;  nothing, 
not  even  the  crude  curves  of  the  railway,  can 
utterly  deform  the  suavity  of  contour  of  one 
bay  after  another  along  the  whole  reach  of  the 
Riviera.  And  of  all  this,  he  has  only  a  cold 
head  knowledge  that  is  divorced  from  enjoy- 
ment He  recognises  with  his  intelligence 
that  this  thing  and  that  thing  is  beautiful, 
while  in  his  heart  of  hearts  he  has  to  confess 
that  it  is  not  beautiful  for  him.  It  is  in  vain 
that  he  spurs  his  discouraged  spirit ;  in  vain 
tliat  he  chooses  out  points  of  view,  and 
stands  there,  looking  with  all  his  eyes,  and 
waiting  for  some  return  of  the  pleasure  that 


1 34  Ordered  South 

he  remembers  in  other  days,  as  the  sick  foik 
may  have  awaited  the  coming  of  the  angel  at 
the  pool  of  Bethesda.  He  is  like  an  enthu- 
siast leading  about  with  him  a  stolid,  indiffer- 
ent tourist.  There  is  some  one  by  who  is 
out  of  sympathy  with  the  scene,  and  is  not 
moved  up  to  the  measure  of  the  occasion  ; 
and  that  some  one  is  himself.  The  world  is 
disenchanted  for  him.  He  seems  to  himself 
to  touch  things  with  muffled  hands,  and  to 
see  them  through  a  veil.  His  life  becomes  a 
palsied  fumbling  after  notes  that  are  silent 
when  he  has  found  and  struck  them.  He 
cannot  recognise  that  this  phlegmatic  and 
unimpressionable  body  with  which  he  now 
goes  burthened,  is  the  same  that  he  knew 
heretofore  so  .quick  and  delicate  and  alive. 

He  is  tempted  to  lay  the  blame  on  the 
very  softness  and  amenity  of  the  climate,  and 
to  fancy  that  in  the  rigours  of  the  winter  at 
home,  these  dead  emotions  would  revive  and 
flourish.  A  longing  for  the  brightness  and 
silence  of  fallen  snow  seizes  him  at  such  times. 
He  is  homesick  for  the  hale  rough  weather ; 


Ordered  South  135 

for  the  tracery  of  the  frost  upon  his  window- 
panes  at  morning,  the  reluctant  descent  of 
the  first  flakes,  and  the  white  roofs  relie\ed 
against  the  sombre  sky.  And  yet  the  stuff 
of  which  these  yearnings  are  made,  is  of  the 
flimsiest ;  if  but  the  thermometer  fall  a  little 
below  its  ordinary  Mediterranean  level,  or  a 
wind  come  down  from  the  snow-clad  Alps 
behind,  the  spirit  of  his  fancies  changes  upon 
the  instant,  and  many  a  doleful  vignette  of 
the  grim  wintry  streets  at  home  returns  to 
him,  and  begins  to  haunt  his  memory.  The 
hopeless,  huddled  attitude  of  tramps  in  dof.r- 
ways  ;  the  flinching  gait  of  barefoot  children 
on  the  icy  pavement  ;  the  sheen  of  the  rainy 
streets  towards  afternoon ;  the  meagre  anatomy 
of  the  poor  defined  by  the  cl+nging  of  wet 
garments ;  the  high  canorous  note  of  the 
North-easter  on  days  when  the  very  houses 
seem  to  stiffen  with  cold  :  these,  and  such  as 
these,  crowd  back  upon  him,  and  mockingly 
substitute  themselves  for  the  fanciful  winter 
scenes  with  which  he  had  pleased  himself  a 
while  before.       He  cannot  be  glad  enough 


17,6  Ordered  SoiUh 

that  he  is  where  he  is.  If  only  the  otherg 
could  be  there  also ;  if  only  those  tramps 
could  lie  down  for  a  little  in  the  sunshine, 
and  those  children  warm  their  feet,  this  once, 
upon  a  kindlier  earth  ;  if  only  there  were  no 
cold  anywhere,  and  no  nakedness,  and  no 
hunger  ;  if  only  it  were  as  well  with  all  men 
as  it  is  with  him  ! 

For  it  is  not  altogether  ill  with  the  invalid, 
after  all.  If  it  is  only  rarely  that  anything 
penetrates  vividly  into  his  numbed  spirit,  yet, 
when  anything  does,  it  brings  with  it  a  joy 
that  is  all  the  more  poignant  for  its  very 
rarity.  There  is  something  pathetic  in  these 
occasional  returns  of  a  glad  activity  of  heart. 
In  his  lowest  hours  he  will  be  stirred  and 
awakened  by  many  such ;  and  they  will 
spring  perhaps  from  very  trivial  sources  ;  as 
a  friend  once  said  to  me,  the  "  spirit  of  de- 
light "  comes  often  on  small  wings.  For  the 
pleasure  that  we  take  in  beautiful  nature  is 
essentially  capricious.  It  comes  sometimes 
when  we  least  look  for  it ;  and  sometimes, 
when  we  expect  it  most  certainly,  it  leaves 


Ordered  South  137 

us  to  g^ape  joylessly  for  days  together,  in  the 
very  home-land  of  the  beautiful.  We  may 
have  passed  a  place  a  thousand  times  and 
one  ;  and  on  the  thousand  and  second  it  will 
be  transfigured,  and  stand  forth  in  a  certain 
splendour  of  reality  from  the  dull  circle  of 
surroundings ;  so  that  we  see  it  "  with  a 
child's  first  pleasure,"  as  Wordsworth  saw 
the  daffodils  by  the  lake  side.  And  if  this 
falls  out  capriciously  with  the  healthy,  how 
much  more  so  with  the  invalid.  Some  day 
he  will  find  his  first  violet,  and  be  lost  in 
pleasant  wonder,  by  what  alchemy  the  cold 
earth  of  the  clods,  and  the  vapid  air  and 
rain,  can  be  transmuted  into  colour  so  rich 
and  odour  so  touchingly  sweet.  Or  perhaps 
he  may  see  a  group  of  washerwomen  relieved, 
on  a  spit  of  shingle,  against  the  blue  sea,  or 
a  meeting  of  flower-gatherers  in  the  tempered 
daylight  of  an  olive-garden  ;  and  something 
significant  or  monumental  in  the  grouping, 
something  in  the  harmony  of  faint  colour 
that  is  always  characteristic  of  the  dress  of 
these  southern  women,  will    come   home  to 


138  Ordered  Sotitk 

him  unexpectedly,  and  awake  in  him  that 
satisfaction  with  which  we  tell  ourselves  that 
we  are  the  richer  by  one  more  beautiful 
experience.  Or  it  may  be  something  even 
slighter :  as  when  the  opulence  of  the  sun- 
shine, which  somehow  gets  lost  and  fails  to 
produce  its  effect  on  the  large  scale,  is 
suddenly  revealed  to  him  by  the  chance 
isolation — as  he  changes  the  position  of  his 
sunshade — of  a  yard  or  two  of  roadway  with 
its  stones  and  weeds.  And  then,  there  is  no 
end  to  the  infinite  variety  of  the  olive-yards 
themselves.  Even  the  colour  is  indeterminate 
and  continually  shifting :  now  you  would 
say  it  was  green,  now  gray,  now  blue  ;  now 
tree  stands  above  tree,  like  "  cloud  on  cloud," 
massed  into  filmy  indistinctness  ;  and  now, 
at  the  wind's  will,  the  whole  sea  of  foliage  is 
shaken  and  broken  up  with  little  momentary 
silverings  and  shadows.  But  every  one  sees 
the  world  in  his  own  way.  To  some  the 
glad  moment  may  have  arrived  on  other 
provocations  ;  and  their  recollection  may  be 
most   vivid   of  the   stately    gait    of   women 


Ordered  South  139 

carrying  burthens  on  their  heads  ;  of  tropical 
effects,  with  canes  and  naked  rock  and  sun- 
light i  of  the  relief  of  cypresses  ;  of  the 
troubled,  busy-looking  groups  of  sea-pines, 
that  seem  always  as  if  they  were  being 
wielded  and  swept  together  by  a  whirlwind  ; 
of  the  air  coming,  laden  with  virginal  per- 
fumes, over  the  myrtles  and  the  scented 
underwood  ;  of  the  empurpled  hills  standing 
up,  solemn  and  sharp,  out  of  the  green-gold 
air  of  the  east  at  evening. 

There  go  many  elements,  without  doubt, 
to  the  making  of  one  such  moment  of  intense 
perception  ,  and  it  is  on  the  happy  agreement 
of  these  many  elements,  on  the  harmonious 
vibration  of  many  nerves,  that  the  whole 
delight  of  the  moment  must  depend.  Who 
can  forget  how,  when  he  has  chanced  upon 
some  attitude  of  complete  restfulness,  after 
long  uneasy  rolling  to  and  fro  on  grass  or 
heather,  the  whole  fashion  of  the  landscape 
has  been  changed  for  him,  as  though  the  sun 
had  just  broken  forth,  or  a  great  artist  had 
only  then  completed,  by  some  cunning  touch, 


1 40  Ordered  South 

the  composition  of  the  picture?  And  not 
only  a  change  of  posture — a  snatch  ol 
perfume,  the  sudden  singing  of  a  bird,  the 
freshness  of  some  pulse  of  air  from  an  invisible 
sea,  the  light  shadow  of  a  travelling  cloud, 
the  merest  nothing  that  sends  a  little  shiver 
along  the  most  infinitesimal  nerve  of  a  man's 
body — not  one  of  the  least  of  these  but  has 
a  hand  somehow^  in  the  general  effect,  and 
brings  some  refinement  of  its  own  into  the 
character  of  the  pleasure  we  feel. 

And  if  the  external  conditions  are  thus 
varied  and  subtle,  even  more  so  are  those 
within  our  own  bodies.  No  man  can  find 
out  the  world,  says  Solomon,  from  beginning 
to  end,  because  the  world  is  in  his  heart ; 
and  so  it  is  impossible  for  any  of  us  to 
understand,  from  beginning  to  end,  that 
agreement  of  harmonious  circumstances  that 
creates  in  us  the  highest  pleasure  of  admira- 
tion, precisely  because  some  of  these  circum- 
stances are  hidden  from  us  for  ever  in  the 
constitution  of  our  own  bodies.  After  we 
have  reckoned  up  all  that  we  can  see  or  hear 


07'dered  South  1 4 1 

or  feel,  there  still  remains  to  be  taken  into 
account  some  sensibility  more  delicate  than 
usual  in  the  nerves  affected,  or  some  exquisite 
refinement  in  the  architecture  of  the  brain, 
which  is  indeed  to  the  sense  of  the  beautiful 
as  the  eye  or  the  ear  to  the  sense  of  hearing 
or  sight.  TWe  admire  splendid  views  and 
great  pictures  ;  and  yet  what  is  truly  admir- 
able is  rather  the  mind  within  us,  that 
gathers  together  these  scattered  details  for 
its  delight,  and  makes  out  of  certain  colours, 
certain  distributions  of  graduated  light  and 
darkness,  that  intelligible  whole  which  alone 
we  call  a  picture  or  a  view."^  Hazlitt,  relating 
in  one  of  his  essays  how  he  went  on  loot 
from  one  great  man's  house  to  another's  in 
search  of  works  of  art,  begins  suddenly  to 
triumph  over  these  noble  and  wealthy  owners, 
because  he  was  more  capable  of  enjoying 
their  costly  possessions  than  they  were  ; 
because  they  had  paid  the  money  and  he  had 
received  the  pleasure.  And  the  occasion  is 
a  fair  one  for  self-complacency.  While  the 
one  man  was  working  to  be  able  to  buy  the 


142  Ordered  South 

picture,  the  other  was  working  to  be  able  to 
enjoy  the  picture.  An  inherited  aptitude 
will  have  been  diligently  improved  in  either 
case  ;  only  the  one  man  has  made  for  himself 
a  fortune,  and  the  other  has  made  for  himself 
a  living  spirit.  It  is  a  fair  occasion  for  self- 
complacency,  I  repeat,  when  the  event  shows 
a  man  to  have  chosen  the  better  part,  and 
laid  out  his  life  more  wisely,  in  the  long  run, 
than  those  who  have  credit  for  most  wisdom. 
And  yet  even  this  is  not  a  good  unmixed  ; 
and  like  all  other  possessions,  although  in  a 
less  degree,  the  possession  of  a  brain  that 
has  been  thus  improved  and  cultivated,  and 
made  into  the  prime  organ  of  a  man's  enjoy- 
ment, brings  with  it  certain  inevitable  cares 
and  disappointments.  The  happiness  of  such 
an  one  comes  to  depend  greatly  upon  those 
fine  shades  of  sensation  that  heighten  and 
harmonise  the  coarser  elements  of  beauty. 
And  thus  a  degree  of  nervous  prostration, 
that  to  other  men  would  be  hardly  disagreeable, 
is  enough  to  overthrow  for  him  the  whole 
fabric   of  his   life,   to    take,   except   at   rare 


Ordered  South  143 

moments,  the  edge  off  his  pleasures,  and  to 
meet  him  wherever  he  goes  with  failure,  and 
the  sense  of  want,  and  disenchantment  of  the 
world  and  life. 

It  is  not  in  such  numbness  of  spirit  only 
that  the  life  of  the  invalid  resembles  a  pre- 
mature old  age.  Those  excursions  that  he 
had  promised  himself  to  finish,  prove  too 
long  or  too  arduous  for  his  feeble  body , 
and  the  barrier-hills  are  as  impassable  as 
ever.  Many  a  white  town  that  sits  far  out 
on  the  promontory,  many  a  comely  fold  of 
wood  on  the  mountain  side,  beckons  and 
allures  his  imagination  day  after  day,  and  is 
yet  as  inaccessible  to  his  feet  as  the  clefts 
and  gorges  of  the  clouds.  The  sense  of 
distance  grows  upon  him  wonderfully ;  and 
after  some  feverish  efforts  and  the  fretful 
uneasiness  of  the  first  few  days,  he  falls 
contentedly  in  with  the  restrictions  of  his 
weakness.  His  narrow  round  becomes  plea- 
sant and  familiar  to  him  as  the  cell  to  a 
contented  prisoner.  Just  as  he  has  fallen 
already  out  of  the  mid  race  of  active  life,  he 


1 44  Ordei'ed  South 

now  falls  out  of  the  little  eddy  that  circulate? 
in  the  shallow  waters  of  the  sanatorium. 
He  sees  the  country  people  come  and  go 
about  their  everyday  affairs,  the  foreigners 
stream  out  in  goodly  pleasure  parties  ;  the 
stir  of  man's  activity  is  all  about  him,  as  he 
suns  himself  inertly  in  some  sheltered  corner; 
and  he  looks  on  with  a  patriarchal  imperson- 
ality of  interest,  such  as  a  man  may  feel 
when  he  pictures  to  himself  the  fortunes  of 
his  remote  descendants,  or  the  robust  old  age 
of  the  oak  he  has  planted  over-night. 

In  this  falling  aside,  in  this  quietude  and 
desertion  of  other  men,  there  is  no  inhar- 
monious prelude  to  the  last  quietude  and 
desertion  of  the  grave  ;  in  this  dulness  of 
the  senses  there  is  a  gentle  preparation  for 
the  final  insensibility  of  death.  And  to  him 
the  idea  of  mortality  comes  in  a  shape  less 
violent  and  harsh  than  is  its  wont,  less  as 
an  abrupt  catastrophe  than  as  a  thing  of 
infinitesimal  gradation,  and  the  last  step  on 
a  long  decline  of  way.  As  we  turn  to  and 
fro  in  bed,  and  every  moment  the  movements 


Ordered  South  145 

grow  feebler   and  smaller    and  the  attitude 
more  restful  and  easy,  until  sleep  overtakes 
us  at  a  stride   and  we  move    no    more,  so 
desire  after  desire  leaves  him  ;  day  by  day 
his  strength  decreases,  and  the  circle  of  his 
activity  grows  ever  narrower  ;  and  he  feels, 
if  he  is  to  be  thus  tenderly  weaned  from  the 
passion  of  life,  thus  gradually  inducted  into 
the  slumber  of  death,  that  when  at  last  the 
end   comes,  it  will    come   quietly  and    fitly 
If  anything  is  to  reconcile  poor  spirits  to  the 
coming  of  the   last   enemy,  surely  it   should 
be  such  a  mild  approach  as  this  ;  not  to  hale 
us   forth  with  violence,  but  to  persuade  us 
from  a  place  we  have  no  further  pleasure  in. 
It    is    not    so     much,    indeed,    death    that 
approaches  as  life  that  withdraws  and  withers 
up  from  round  about  him.      He  has  outlived 
his    own     usefulness,    and    almost    his    own 
enjoyment ;  and  if  there  is  to  be  no  recovery; 
if  never  again  will  he  be  young  and  strong 
and  passionate,  if  the  actual  present  shall  be 
to  him  always  like  a  thing  read  in  a  book  or 
remembered  out  of  the  far-away  past ;  if,  in 


[46  Ordered  South 

fact,  this  be  veritably  nightfall,  he  will  not 
wish  greatly  for  the  continuance  of  a  twilight 
that  only  strains  and  disappoints  the  eyes, 
but  steadfastly  await  the  perfect  darkness. 
He  will  pray  for  Medea :  when  she  comes, 
let  her  either  rejuvenate  or  slay. 

And  yet  the  ties  that  still  attach  him  to 
tlie  world  are  many  and  kindly.  The  sight 
of  children  has  a  significance  for  him  such 
as  it  may  have  for  the  aged  also,  but  not  for 
others.  If  he  has  been  used  to  feel  humanely, 
and  to  look  upon  life  somewhat  more  widely 
than  from  the  narrow  loophole  of  personal 
pleasure  and  advancement,  it  is  strange  how 
small  a  portion  of  his  thoughts  will  be  changed 
or  embittered  by  this  proximity  of  death. 
He  knows  that  already,  in  English  counties, 
the  sower  follows  the  ploughman  up  the  face 
of  the  field,  and  the  rooks  follow  the  sower  ; 
and  he  knows  also  that  he  may  not  live  to 
go  home  again  and  see  the  corn  spring  and 
ripen,  and  be  cut  down  at  last,  and  brought 
home  with  gladness.  And  yet  the  future  of 
i-his  harvest,  the  continuance  of  drought  or 


Ordered  South  147 

the  coming  of  rain  unseasonably,  touch  him 
as  sensibly  as  ever.  For  he  has  long  been 
used  to  wait  with  interest  the  issue  of  events 
in  which  his  own  concern  was  nothing  ;  and 
to  be  joyful  in  a  plenty,  and  sorrowful  for  a 
famine,  that  did  not  increase  or  diminish,  by 
one  half  loaf,  the  equable  sufficiency  of  his 
own  supply.  Thus  there  remain  unaltered 
all  the  disinterested  hopes  for  mankind  and 
a  better  future  which  have  been  the  solace 
and  inspiration  of  his  life.  These  he  has  set 
beyond  the  reach  of  any  fate  that  only 
menaces  himself;  and  it  makes  small  differ- 
ence whether  he  die  five  thousand  years,  or 
five  thousand  and  fifty  years,  before  the  good 
epoch  for  which  he  faithfully  labours.  He 
has  not  deceived  himself ;  he  has  known 
from  the  beginning  that  he  followed  the 
pillar  of  fire  and  cloud,  only  to  perish  himself 
in  the  wilderness,  and  that  it  was  reserved 
for  others  to  enter  joyfully  into  possession  of 
the  land.  And  so,  as  everything  grows 
grayer  and  quieter  about  him,  and  slopes 
towards    extinction,    these    unfaded    visions 


148  Ordered  South 

accompany  his  sad  decline,  and  follow  him, 
with  friendly  voices  and  hopeful  words,  into 
the  very  vestibule  of  death.  The  desire  of 
love  or  of  fame  scarcely  moved  him,  in  his 
days  of  health,  more  strongly  than  these 
generous  aspirations  move  him  now  ;  and  so 
life  is  carried  forward  beyond  life,  and  a  vista 
kept  open  for  the  eyes  of  hope,  even  when 
his  hands  grope  already  on  the  face  of  the 
impassable. 

Lastly,  he  is  bound  tenderly  to  life  by  the 
thought  of  his  friends  ;  or  shall  we  not  say 
rather,  that  by  their  thought  for  him,  by  their 
unchangeable  solicitude  and  love,  he  remains 
woven  into  the  very  stuff  of  life,  beyond  the 
power  of  bodily  dissolution  to  undo  ?  In  a 
thousand  ways  will  he  survive  and  be  per- 
petuated. Much  of  Etienne  de  la  Boetie 
survived  during  all  the  years  in  which 
Montaigne  continued  to  converse  with  him 
on  the  pages  of  the  ever-delightful  essays. 
Much  of  what  was  truly  Goethe  was  dead 
already  when  he  revisited  places  that  knew 
him  no  more,  and  found  no  better  consolation 


Ordered  South  1 49 

than  the  promise  of  his  own  verses,  that  soon 
lie  too  would  be  at  rest  Indeed,  when  we 
think  of  what  it  is  that  we  most  seek  and 
cherish,  and  find  most  pride  and  pleasure  in 
calling  ours,  it  will  sometimes  seem  to  us  as 
if  our  friends,  at  our  decease,  would  suffer 
loss  more  truly  than  ourselves.  As  a  monarch 
who  should  care  more  for  the  outlying 
colonies  he  knows  on  the  map  or  through 
the  report  of  his  vicegerents,  than  for  the 
trunk  of  his  empire  under  his  eyes  at  home, 
are  we  not  more  concerned  about  the  shadowy 
life  that  we  have  in  the  hearts  of  others,  and 
that  portion  in  their  thoughts  and  fancies 
which,  in  a  certain  far-away  sense,  belongs 
to  us,  than  about  the  real  knot  of  our  identity 
— that  central  metropolis  of  self,  of  which 
alone  we  are  immediately  aware — or  the 
diligent  service  of  arteries  and  veins  and 
infinitesimal  activity  of  ganglia,  which  we 
know  (as  we  know  a  proposition  in  Euclid) 
to  be  the  source  and  substance  of  the  whole? 
At  the  death  of  every  one  whom  we  love, 
some    fair    and    honourable    portion   of   ouf 


150  Ordered  South 

existence  falls  away,  and  we  are  dislodged 
from  one  of  these  dear  provinces  ;  and  they 
are  not,  perhaps,  the  most  fortunate  who 
survive  a  long  series  of  such  impoverishments, 
till  their  life  and  influence  narrow  gradually 
into  the  meagre  limit  of  their  own  spirits, 
and  death,  when  he  comes  at  last,  can  destroy 
them  at  one  blow. 

Note. — To  this  essay  I  must  in  honesty  append  a 
word  or  two  of  qualification  ;  for  this  is  one  of  the 
points  on  which  a  slightly  greater  age  teaches  us  a 
slightly  different  wisdom  : 

A  youth  delights  in  generalities,  and  keeps  loose 
from  particular  obligations  ;  he  jogs  on  the  footpath 
way,  himself  pursuing  butterflies,  but  courteously 
lending  his  applause  to  the  advance  of  the  human 
species  and  the  coming  of  the  kingdom  of  justice  and 
love.  As  he  grows  older,  he  begins  to  think  more 
narrowly  of  man's  action  in  the  general,  and  perhaps 
more  arrogantly  of  his  own  in  the  particular.  He 
has  not  that  same  unspeakable  trust  in  what  he 
would  have  done  had  he  been  spared,  seeing  finally 
that  that  would  have  been  little ;  but  he  has  a  far 
higher  notion  of  the  blank  that  he  will  make  by 
dying.  A  young  man  feels  himself  one  too  many  in 
the  world ;  his  is  a  painful  situation  :  he  has  no 
calling  ;  no  obvious  utility  ;  no  ties,  but  to  his  parents, 
and  these  he  is  sure  to  disr-^gard.      I  do  not  think 


Orde7'ed  South  1 5 1 

ihat  a  proper  allowance  has  been  made  for  this  true 
cause  of  suffering  in  youth  ;  but  by  the  mere  fact  of 
a  prolonged  existence,  we  outgrow  either  the  fact  or 
else  the  feeling.  Either  we  become  so  callously 
accustomed  to  our  own  useless  figure  in  the  world,  or 
else — and  this,  thank  God,  in  the  majority  of  cases — 
we  so  collect  about  us  the  interest  or  the  love  of  our 
fellows,  so  multiply  our  effective  part  in  the  affairs  of 
life,  that  we  need  to  entertain  no  longer  the  question 
of  our  right  to  be. 

And  so  in  the  majority  of  cases,  a  man  who  fancies 
himself  dying,  will  get  cold  comfort  from  the  very 
youthful  view  expressed  in  this  essay.  He,  as  a  living 
man,  has  some  to  help,  some  to  love,  some  to  correct ; 
it  may  be,  some  to  punish.  These  duties  cling,  not 
upon  humanity,  but  upon  the  man  himself  It  is  he, 
not  another,  who  is  one  woman's  son  and  a  second 
woman's  husband  and  a  third  woman's  father.  That 
life  which  began  so  small,  has  now  grown,  with  a 
myriad  filaments,  into  the  lives  of  others.  It  is  not  in- 
dispensable ;  another  will  take  the  place  and  shoulder 
the  discharged  responsibility  ;  but  the  better  the  man 
and  the  nobler  his  purposes,  the  more  will  he  be 
tempted  to  regret  the  extinction  of  his  powers  and 
the  deletion  of  his  personality.  To  have  lived  a 
generation,  is  not  only  to  have  grown  at  home  in  that 
perplexing  medium,  but  to  have  assumed  innumerable 
duties.  To  die  at  such  an  age,  has,  for  all  but  the 
entirely  base,  something  of  the  air  of  a  betrayal.  A 
man  does  not  only  reflect  upon  what  he  might  have 
done  in  a  future  that  is  never  to  be  his  ;  but  beholding 
himself  so  early  a  deserter  from  the  fight,  he  eats  his 


152  Ordered  South 

heart  for  the  good  he  might  have  done  already.  To 
have  been  so  useless  and  now  to  lose  all  hope  oi 
being  useful  any  more — there  it  is  that  death  and 
memory  assail  him.  And  even  if  mankind  shall  go 
on,  founding  heroic  cities,  practising  heroic  virtues, 
rismg  steadily  from  strength  to  strength  ;  even  if  his 
work  shall  be  fulfilled,  his  friends  consoled,  his  wife 
remarried  by  a  better  than  he ;  how  shall  this  alter, 
in  one  jot,  his  estimation  of  a  career  which  was  his 
only  business  in  this  world,  which  was  so  fitfull| 
pursued)  and  which  is  now  so  ineffectively  to  end  ? 


MS  TRIPLEX 

n^HE  changes  wrought  by  death  are  In 
themselves  so  sharp  and  final,  and  so 
terrible  and  melancholy  in  their  consequences, 
that  the  thing  stands  alone  in  man's  experi- 
ence, and  has  no  parallel  upon  earth.  It 
outdoes  all  other  accidents  because  it  is  the 
last  of  theni.  Sometimes  it  leaps  suddenly 
upon  its  victims,  like  a  Thug  ;  sometimes  it 
lays  a  regular  siege  and  creeps  upon  their 
citadel  during  a  score  of  years.  And  when 
th;":  business  is  done,  there  is  sore  havoc 
mide  in  other  people's  lives,  and  a  pin 
knocked  out  by  which  many  subsidiary 
friendships  hung  together.  There  are  empty 
chairs,  solitary  walks,  and  single  beds  at 
night.  Again,  in  taking  away  our  friends, 
death  does  not  take  them  away  utterly,  but 


154  -^s  Triplex 

leaves  behind  a  mocking,  tragical,  and  soon 
intolerable  residue,  which  must  be  hurriedly 
concealed.  Hence  a  whole  chapter  of  sights 
and  customs  striking  to  the  mind,  from  the 
pyramids  of  Egypt  to  the  gibbets  and  dule 
trees  of  mediaeval  Europe.  The  poorest 
persons  have  a  bit  of  pageant  going  towards 
the  tomb  ;  memorial  stones  are  set  up  over 
the  least  memorable  ;  and,  in  order  to  pre- 
serve some  show  of  respect  for  what  remains 
of  our  old  loves  and  friendships,  we  must 
accompany  it  with  much  grimly  ludicrous 
ceremonial,  and  the  hired  undertaker  parades 
before  the  door.  All  this,  and  much  more 
of  the  same  sort,  accompanied  by  the 
eloquence  of  poets,  has  gone  a  great  way 
to  put  humanity  in  error ;  nay,  in  many 
philosophies  the  error  has  been  embodied 
and  laid  down  with  every  cirtumstance  of 
logic ;  although  in  real  life  the  bustle  and 
swiftness,  in  leaving  people  little  time  to 
think,  have  not  left  them  time  enough  to 
go  dangerously  wrong  in  practice. 

As  a  matter  of  fact,  although  few  things 


yEi>  Triplex  155 

are  spoken  of  with  more  fearful  whisperings 
than  this  prospect  of  death,  few  have  less 
influence  on  conduct  under  healthy  circum- 
stances. We  have  all  heard  of  cities  in 
South  America  built  upon  the  side  of  fiery 
mountains,  and  how,  even  in  this  tremendous 
neighbourhood,  the  inhabitants  are  not  a  jot 
more  impressed  by  the  solemnity  of  mortal 
conditions  than  if  they  were  delving  gardens 
in  the  greenest  corner  of  England.  There 
are  serenades  and  suppers  and  much  gallantry 
among  the  myrtles  overhead  ;  and  mean- 
while the  foundation  shudders  underfoot,  the 
bowels  of  the  mountain  growl,  and  at  any 
moment  living  ruin  may  leap  sky-high  into 
the  moonlight,  and  tumble  man  and  his 
merry-making  in  the  dust.  In  the  eyes  of 
very  young  people,  and  very  dull  old  ones, 
there  is  something  indescribably  reckless 
and  desperate  in  such  a  picture.  It  seems 
not  credible  that  respectable  married  people, 
with  umbrellas,  should  find  appetite  for  a 
bit  of  supper  within  quite  a  long  distance  of 
a   fiery   mountain  ;  ordinary   life    begins    to 


156  /Es  Triplex 

smell  of  high-handed  debauch  when  it  is 
carried  on  so  close  to  a  catastrophe  ;  and 
even  cheese  and  salad,  it  seems,  could  hardly 
be  relished  in  such  circumstances  without 
something  like  a  defiance  of  the  Creator. 
It  should  be  a  place  for  nobody  but  hermits 
dwelling  in  prayer  and  maceration,  or  mere 
born -devils  drowning  care  in  a  perpetual 
carouse. 

And  yet,  when  one  comes  to  think  upon  it 
calmly,  the  situation  of  these  South  American 
citizens  forms  only  a  very  pale  figure  for 
the  state  of  ordinary  mankind.  This  world 
itself,  travelling  blindly  and  swiftly  in  over- 
crowded space,  among  a  million  other  worlds 
travelling  blindly  and  swiftly  in  contrary 
directions,  may  very  well  come  by  a  knock 
that  would  set  it  into  explosion  like  a  penny 
squib.  And  what,  pathologically  looked  at, 
is  the  human  body  with  all  its  organs,  but 
a  mere  bagful  of  petards?  The  least  of 
these  is  as  dangerous  to  the  whole  economy 
as  the  ship's  powder-magazine  to  the  ship  ; 
and  with  every  breath  we  breathe,  and  every 


j^s  Triplex  157 

meal  we  eat,  we  are  putting  one  or  more  of 
them  in  peril.  ^If  we  clung  as  devotedly 
as  some  philosophers  pretend  we  do  to 
the  abstract  idea  of  life,  or  were  half  as 
frightened  as  they  make  out  we  are,  for 
the  subversive  accident  that  ends  it  all,  the 
trumpets  might  sound  by  the  hour  and  no 
one  would  follow  them  into  battle — the 
blue-peter  might  fly  at  the  truck,  but  who 
would  climb  into  a  sea-going  ship  ?  Think 
(if  these  philosophers  were  right)  with  what 
a  preparation  of  spirit  we  should  affront  the 
daily  peril  of  the  dinner-table :  a  deadlier 
spot  than  any  battle-field  in  history,  where 
the  far  greater  proportion  of  our  ancestors 
have  miserably  left  their  bones  !  What 
woman  would  ever  be  lured  into  marriage, 
so  much  more  dangerous  than  the  wildest 
sea  ?  And  what  would  it  be  to  grow  old  ? 
For,  after  a  certain  distance,  every  step  we 
4ake  in  life  we  find  the  ice  growing  thinner 
below  our  feet,  and  all  around  us  and  behind  us 
we  see  our  contemporaries  going  through.  By 
the  time  a  man  gets  well  into  the  seventies, 


158  y£s  Triplex 

his  continued  existence  is  a  mere  miracle ; 
and  when  he  lays  his  old  bones  in  bed  for 
the  night,  there  is  an  overwhelming  prob- 
ability that  he  will  never  see  the  day.  Do 
the  old  men  mind  it,  as  a  matter  of  fact  ? 
Why,  no.  They  were  never  merrier  ;  they 
have  their  grog  at  night,  and  tell  the  raciest  * 
stories  ;  they  hear  of,  the  death ,  of  people 
about  their  _,own  age,  or  even  .youuger,  not^ 
as  if  it  was  a  grisly  warning,  but  with  a 
simple  childlike  pleasure  at  having  outlived 
some  one  else  ;  and  when  a  draught  might 
puff  them  out  like  a  guttering  candle,  or  a 
bit  of  a  stumble  shatter  them  like  so  much 
glass,  their  old  hearts  keep  sound  and  un- 
affrightcd,  and  they  go  on,  bubbling  with 
laughter,  through  years  of  man's  age  com- 
pared to  which  the  valley  at  Balaklava  was 
as  safe  and  peaceful  as  a  village  cricket-green 
on  Sunday.  It  may  fairly  be  questioned  (if 
we  look  to  the  peril  only)  whether  it  was  a 
much  more  daring  feat  for  Curtius  to  plunge 
into  the  gulf,  than  for  any  old  gentleman  of 
ninety  to  doff  his  clothes  and  clamber  into  bed 


^s  Triplex  159 

Indeed,  it  is  a  memorable  subject  for  con-  \ 
sideration,  with  what  unconcern  and  gaiety 
mankind  pricks  on  along  the  Valley  of  the 
Shadow  of  Death.  The  whole  way  is  one 
wilderness  of  snares,  and  the  end  of  it,  for 
those  who  fear  the  last  pinch,  is  irrevocable 
ruin.  And  yet  we  go  spinning  through  it 
all,  like  a  party  for  the  Derby.  Perhaps 
the  reader  remembers  one  of  the  humorous 
•  _devices  of  the  deified  Caligula  :  how  he 
encouraged  a  vast  concourse  of  holiday- 
makers  on  to  his  bridge  over  Baia^  bay  ; 
and  when  they  were  in  the  height  of  their 
enjoyment,  turned  loose  the  Praetorian  guards 
among  the  company,  and  had  them  tossed 
into  the  sea.  This  is  no  bad  miniature 
of  the  dealings  of  nature  with  the  transitory 
race  of  man.  Only,  what  a  chequered  picnic 
we  have  of  it,  even  while  it  lasts  !  and  into 
what  great  waters,  not  to  be  crossed  by  any 
swimmer,  God's  pale  Praetorian  throws  us 
over  in  the  end  ! 

We  live  the  time  that  a  match  flickers  ; 
we  pop  the  cork  of  a  ginger-beer  bottle,  and 


\ 


i6o  ^s  Triplex 

the  earthquake  swallows  us  on  the  instant 
Is  it  not  odd,  is  it  not  incongruous,  is  it  not, 
in  the  highest  sense  of  human  speech,  in- 
credible,  that  we  should  think  so  highly  of 
the  ginger- beer,  and  regard  so  little  the 
devouring  earthquake?  The  love  of  Life 
and  the  fear  of  Death  are  two  famous  phrases 
that  grow  harder  to  understand  the  more  we 
think  about  them.  It  is  a  well-known  fact 
that  an  immense  proportion  of  boat  accidents 
would  never  happen  if  people  held  the  sheet 
in  their  hands  instead  of  making  it  fast ; 
and  yet,  unless  it  be  some  martinet  of  a 
professional  mariner  or  some  landsman  with 
shattered  nerves,  every  one  of  God's  creatures 
makes  it  fast.  A  strange  instance  of  man's 
unconcern  and  brazen  boldness  in  the  face 
of  death  ! 

We  confound  ourselves  with  metaphysical 
phrases,  which  we  import  into  daily  talk  with 
noble  inappropriateness.  We  have  no  idea 
of  what  death  is,  apart  from  its  circumstances 
and  some  of  its  consequences  to  others  ;  and 
although  we  have  some  experience  of  living. 


y^s  Triplex  i6i 

there  is  not  a  man  on  earth  who  has  flown 
so  high  into  abstraction  as  to  have  any 
practical  guess  at  the  meaning  ot  the  word 
life.  All  literature,  from  Job  and  Omar  i 
Khayam  to  Thomas  Carlyle  or  Walt  Whit-  ' 
man,  is  but  an  attempt  to  look  upon  the  I 
human  state  with  such  largeness  of  view  as 
shall  enable  us  to  rise  from  the  consideration 
of  living  to  the  Definition  of  Life.  And  our 
sages  give  us  about  the  best  satisfaction  in 
their  power  when  they  say  that  it  is  a  vapour, 
or  a  show,  or  made  out  of  the  same  stuff 
with  dreams.  Philosophy,  in  its  more  rigid 
sense,  has  been  at  the  same  work  for  ages  ; 
and  after  a  myriad  bald  heads  have  wagged 
over  the  problem,  and  piles  of  words  have 
been  heaped  one  upon  another  into  dry  and 
cloudy  volumes  without  end,  philosophy  has 
the  honour  of  laying  before  us,  with  modest 
pride,  her  contribution  towards  the  subject : 
that  life  is  a  Permanent  Possibility  of  Sensa- 
tion, Truly  a  fine  result !  A  man  may 
very  well  love  beef,  or  hunting,  or  a  woman  ; 

but  surely,  surely,  not  a  Permanent  Possibility 

M 

^>  ^  -  w^yL-. 


1 62       '  yEs  Tfiplex 

of  Sensation  !  He  may  be  afraid  of  a  preci- 
pice,  or  a  dentist,  or  a  large  enemy  with  a 
club,  or  even  an  undertaker's  man  ;  but  not 
certainly  of  abstract  death.  We  may  trick 
with  the  word  life  in  its  dozen  senses  until 
we  are  weary  of  tricking  ;  we  may  argue  in 
terms  of  all  the  philosophies  on  earth,  but 
one  fact  remains  true  throughout — that  we 
do  not  love  life,  in  the  sense  that  we  are 
greatly  preoccupied  about  its  conservation  ; 
that  we  do  not,  properly  speaking,  love  life 
at  all,  but  living.  Into  the  views  of  the 
least  careful  there  will  enter  some  degree  of 
providence  ;  no  man's  eyes  are  fixed  entirely 
on  the  passing  hour  ;  but  although  we  have 
some  anticipation  of  good  health,  good 
weather,  wine,  active  employinent,  love,  and 
self-approval,  the  sum  of  these  anticipations 
does  not  amount  to  anything  like  a  general 
view  of  life's  possibilities  and  issues  ;  nor  are 
those  who  cherish  them  most  vividly,  at  all 
the  most  scrupulous  of  their  personal  safety. 
To  be  deeply  interested  in  the  accidents  of 
our   existence,  to   enjoy   keenly   the   mixed 


y^s  Triplex  163 

texture  of  human  experience,  rather  leads  a 
man  to  disregard  precautions,  and  risk  his 
neck  against  a  straw.  For  surely  the  love 
of  living  is  stronger  in  an  Alpine  climber 
roping  over  a  peril,  or  a  hunter  riding  merrily 
at  a  stiff  fence,  than  in  a  creature  who  lives 
upon  a  diet  and  walks  a  measured  distance 
in  the  interest  of  his  constitution. 

There  is  a  great  deal  of  veiy  vile  nonsense 
talked  upon  both  sides  of  the  matter  :  tearing 
divines  reducing  life  to  the  dimensions  of  a 
mere  funeral  procession,  so  short  as  to  be 
hardly  decent ;  and  melancholy  unbelievers 
yearning  for  the  tomb  as  if  it  were  a  world 
too  far  away.  Both  sides  must  feel  a  little 
ashamed  of  their  performances  now  and 
again  when  they  draw  in  their  chairs  to 
dinner.  Indeed,  a  good  meal  and  a  bottle 
of  wine  is  an  answer  to  most  standard  works 
upon  the  question.  Whefi  a  man's  heart 
warms  to  his  viands,  he  forgets  a  great  deal 
of  sophistry,  and  soars  into  a  rosy  zone  of 
contemplation.  Death  may  be  knocking  at 
the  door,  like  the  Commander's  statue  ;  we 


I  ©4  ^s  Triplex 

have  something  else  in  hand,  thank  God,  and 
let  him  knock.  Passing  bells  are  ringing  all 
the  world  over.  All  the  world  over,  and 
every  hour,  some  one  is  parting  company 
with  all  his  aches  and  ecstasies.  For  us 
also  the  trap  is  laid.  But  we  are  so  fond  of 
life  that  we  have  no  leisure  to  entertain  the 
terror  of  death.  It  is  a  honeymoon  with  us 
all  through,  and  none  of  the  longest.  Small 
blame  to  us  if  we  give  our  whole  hearts  to 
this  glowing  bride  of  ours,  to  the  appetites, 
to  honour,  to  the  hungry  curiosity  of  the 
mind,  to  the  pleasure  of  the  eyes  in  nature, 
and  the  pride  of  our  own  nimble  bodies. 

We  all  of  us  appreciate  the  sensations  ; 
but  as  for  caring  about  the  Permanence  of 
the  Possibility,  a  man's  head  is  generally 
very  bald,  and  his  senses  very  dull,  before  he 
comes  to  that.  Whether  we  regard  life  as  a 
lane  leading  to  a  dead  wall — a  mere  bag's 
end,  as  the  French  say — or  whether  we 
think  of  it  as  a  vestibule  or  gymnasium, 
where  wc  wait  our  turn  and  prepare  our 
faculties     for     some    more     noble     dest/ny ; 


^s  Triplex  165 

whether  we  thunder  in  a  pulpit,  or  pule  in 
little  atheistic  poetry-books,  about  its  vanity 
and  brevity ;  whether  we  look  justly  for 
years  of  health  and  vigour,  or  are  about  to 
mount  into  a  bath-chair,  as  a  step  towards 
the  hearse  ;  in  each  and  all  of  these  views 
and  situations  there  is  but  one  conclusion 
possible :  that  a  man  should  stop  his  ears 
against  paralysing  terror,  and  run  the  race 
that  is  set  before  him  with  a  single  mind. 
No  one  surely  could  have  recoiled  with  more 
heartache  and  terror  from  the  thought  of 
death  than  our  respected  lexicographer  ;  and 
yet  we  know  how  little  it  affected  his  con- 
duct, how  wisely  and  boldly  he  walked,  and 
in  what  a  fresh  and  lively  vein  he  spoke  of 
life  Already  an  old  man,  he  ventured  on 
his  Highland  tour ;  and  his  heart,  bound 
with  triple  brass,  did  not  recoil  before  twenty- 
seven  individiial  cups  of  tea.  As  courage 
and  intelligence  are  the  two  qualities  best 
worth  a  good  man's  cultivation,  so  it  is  the 
first  part  of  intelligence  to  recognise  our 
precarious  estate  in  life,  and  the  first  part  of 


1 66  ^s  Triplex 

courage  to  be  not  at  all  abashed  before  the 
fact  A  frank  and  somewhat  headlong  car- 
riage, not  \ooking  too  anxiously  before,  not 
dallying  in  maudlin  regret  over  the  past, 
stamps  the  man  who  is  well  armoured  for 
this  world. 

And  not  only  well  armoured  for  himself, 
but  a  good  friend  and  a  good  citizen  to  boot. 
We  do  not  go  to  cowards  for  tender  dealing  ; 
there  is  nothing  so  cruel  as  panic  ;  the  man 
who  has  least  fear  for  his  own  carcase,  has 
most  time  to  consider  others.  That  eminent 
chemist  who  took  his  walks  abroad  in  tin 
shoes,  and  subsisted  wholly  upon  tepid  milk, 
had  all  his  work  cut  out  for  him  in  con- 
siderate dealings  with  his  own  digestion. 
So  soon  as  prudence  has  begun  to  grow  up 
in  the  brain,  like  a  dismal  fungus,  it  finds  its 
first  expression  in  a  paralysis  of  generous 
acts.  The  victim  begins  to  shrink  spiritually  ; 
he  develops  a  fancy  for  parlours  with  a  regu- 
lated temperature,  and  takes  his  morality  on 
the  principle  of  tin  shoes  and  tepid  milk. 
The   care   of  one   important    br)dy   or   soul 


yEs  Triplex  i6; 

becomes  so  engrossing,  that  all  the  noises  of 
the  outer  world  begin  to  come  thin  and  fainl 
into  the  parlour  with  the  regulated  tempera- 
ture ;  and  the  tin  shoes  go  equably  forward 
over  blood  and  rain.  To  be  overwise  is  to 
ossify ;  and  the  scruple-monger  ends  by  stand- 
ing stockstill.  Now  the  man  who  has  his 
heart  on  his  sleeve,  and  a  good  whirling 
weathercock  of  a  brain,  who  reckons  his  life 
as  a  thing  to  be  dashingly  used  and  cheerfully 
hazarded,  makes  a  very  different  acquaintance 
of  the  world,  keeps  all  his  pulses  going  true 
and  fast,  and  gathers  impetus  as  he  runs, 
until,  if  he  be  running  towards  anything 
better  than  wildfire,  he  may  shoot  up  and 
become  a  constellation  in  the  end.  Lord 
look  after  his  health.  Lord  have  a  care  of  his 
soul,  says  he  ;  and  he  has  at  the  key  of  the 
position,  and  swashes  through  incongruity 
and  peril  towards  his  aim.  Death  is  on  all 
sides  of  him  with  pointed  batteries,  as  he  is 
on  all  sides  of  all  of  us  ;  unfortunate  sur- 
prises gird  him  round  ;  mim-mouthed  friends 
and  relations  hold  up  their  hands  in  quite  a 


1 68  ^s  Triplex 

little  elegJacal  synod  about  his  path :  and 
what  cares  he  for  all  this  ?  Being  a  true 
lover  of  living,  a  fellow  with  something 
pushing  and  spontaneous  in  his  inside,  he 
must,  like  any  other  soldier,  in  any  other 
stirring,  deadly  warfare,  push  on  at  his  best 
pace  until  he  touch  the  goal.  "  A  peerage 
or  Westminster  Abbey !"  cried  Nelson  in 
his  bright,  boyish,  heroic  manner.  These 
are  great  incentives  ;  not  for  any  of  these, 
but  for  the  plain  satisfaction  of  living,  of 
being  about  their  business  in  some  sort  or 
other,  do  the  brave,  serviceable  men  of  every 
nation  tread  down  the  nettle  danger,  and 
pass  flyingly  over  all  the  stumbling-blocks  of 
prudence.  Think  of  the  heroism  of  Johnson, 
think  of  that  superb  indifference  to  mortal 
limitation  that  set  him  upon  his  dictionary, 
and  carried  him  through  triumphantly  until 
the  end  !  Who,  if  he  were  wisely  considerate 
of  things  at  large,  would  ever  embark  upon 
any  work  much  more  considerable  than  a 
halfpenny  post  card  .-'  Who  would  project  a 
serial    novel,  after   Thackeray  and    Dickens 


j^s  Triplex  169 

had  each  fallen  in  mid-course?  Who  wculd 
find  heart  enough  to  begin  tc  live,  if  he 
dallied  with  the  consideration  of  death  ? 

And,  after  all,  what  sorry  and  pitiful  quib- 
bling all  this  is !  To  forego  all  the  issues  of 
living  hi  a  parlour  with  a  regulated  tempera- 
ture— as  if  that  were  not  to  die  a  hundred 
times  over,  and  for  ten  years  at  a  stretch  ! 
As  if  it  were  not  to  die  in  one's  own  lifetime, 
and  without  even  the  sad  immunities  of  death! 
As  if  it  were  not  to  die,  and  yet  be  the 
patient  spectators  of  our  own  pitiable  change! 
The  Permanent  Possibility  is  preserved,  but 
the  sensations  carefull}^  held  at  arm's  length, 
as  if  one  kept  a  photographic  plate  in  a  dark 
chamber.  It  is  better  to  lose  health  like  a 
spendthrift  than  to  waste  it  like  a  miser.  It 
is  better  to  live  and  be  done  with  it,  than  to 
die  daily  in  the  sickroom.  By  all  means 
begin  your  folio  ;  even  if  the  doctor  does  not 
give  you  a  year,  even  if  he  hesitates  about  a 
month,  make  one  brave  push  and  see  what 
can  be  accomplished  in  a  week.  It  is  not 
only  in  finished   undertakings  that  we  ought 


170  y^s  Triplex 

to  honour  useful  labour.  A  spirit  goes  out 
of  the  man  who  means  execution,  which  out- 
lives the  most  untimely  ending.  All  who 
have  meant  good  work  with  their  whole 
hearts,  have  done  good  work,  although  they 
may  die  before  they  have  the  time  to  sign  it. 
Every  heart  that  has  beat  strong  and  cheer- 
fully has  left  a  hopeful  impulse  behind  it  in 
the  world,  and  bettered  the  tradition  of  man- 
kind. And  even  if  death  catch  people,  like 
an  open  pitfall,  and  in  mid-career,  laying  out 
vast  projects,  and  planning  monstrous  found- 
ations, flushed  with  hope,  and  their  mouths 
full  of  boastful  language,  they  should  be  at 
once  tripped  up  and  silenced :  is  there  not 
something  brave  and  spirited  in  such  a  ter- 
mination ?  and  does  not  life  go  down  with  a 
better  grace,  foaming  in  full  body  over  a 
precipice,  than  miserably  straggling  to  an 
end  in  sandy  deltas  ?  When  the  Greeks  \ 
made  their  fine  saying  that  those  whom  the 
gods  loyje  die  young,  I  cannot  help  believing 
they  had  this  sort  of  death  also  in  their  eye. 
For  surely,  at  whatever  age  it  overtake  the 


^s  Triplex  171 

man,  this  is  to  die  young.  Death  has  not 
been  suffered  to  take  so  much  as  an  illusion 
from  his  heart.  In  the  hot-fit  of  life,  a-tip- 
toe  on  the  highest  point  of  being,  he  passes 
at  a  bound  on  to  the  other  side.  The  noise 
of  the  mallet  and  chisel  is  scarcely  quenched, 
the  trumpets  are  hardly  done  blowing,  when, 
trailing  with  him  clouds  of  glory,  this  happy- 
starred,  full-blooded  spirit  shoots  into  the 
spiritual  land. 


EL  DORADO 

T  T  seems  as  if  a  great  deal  were  attainable 
in  a  world  where  there  are  so  many 
marriasfes  and  decisive  battles,  and  where  we 
all,  at  certain  hours  of  the  day,  and  with 
great  gusto  and  despatch,  stow  a  portion  of 
victuals  finally  and  irretrievably  into  the  bag 
which  contains  us.  And  it  would  seem  also, 
on  a  hasty  view,  that  the  attainment  of  as 
much  as  possible  was  the  one  goal  of  man's 
contentious  life.  And  yet,  as  regards  the 
spirit,  this  is  but  a  semblance.  We  live  in 
an  ascending  scale  when  we  live  happily, 
one  thing  leading  to  another  in  an  endless 
series.  There  is  always  a  new  horizon  for 
onward-looking  men,  and  although  we  dwell 
on  a  small  planet,  immersed  in  petty  business 
and  not  enduring  beyond  a  brief  period  of 


El  Dorado  1 7  3 

years,  we  are  so  constituted  that  our  hopes 
are  inaccessible,  like  stars,  and  the  term  of 
hoping  is  prolonged  until  the  term  of  life. 
To  be  truly  happy  is  a  question  of  how  we 
begin  and  not  of  how  we  end,  of  what  we 
want  and  not  of  what  we  have.  An  aspira- 
tion is  a  joy  for  ever,  a  possession  as  solid  as 
a  landed  estate,  a  fortune  which  we  can  never 
exhaust  and  which  gives  us  year  by  year  a 
revenue  of  pleasurable  activity.  To  have 
many  of  these  is  to  be  spiritually  rich.  Life 
is  only  a  very  dull  and  ill-directed  theatre 
unless  we  have  some  interests  in  the  piece ; 
and  to  those  who  have  neither  art  nor  science^ 
the  world  is  a  mere  arrangement  of  colours, 
or  a  rough  footway  where  they  may  very 
well  break  their  shins.  It  is  in  virtue  oi 
his  own  desires  and  curiosities  that  any  man 
continues  to  exist  with  even  patience,  that 
he  is  charmed  by  the  look  of  things  and 
people,  and  that  he  wakens  every  morning 
with  a  renewed  appetite  for  work  and  plea- 
sure. Desire  and  curiosity  are  the  two  eyes 
through  which  he  sees  the  world  in  the  most 


174  El  Dorado 

enchanted  colours :  it  is  they  that  make 
women  beautiful  or  fossils  interesting :  and 
the  man  may  squander  his  estate  and  come 
to  beggary,  but  if  he  keeps  these  two  amulets 
he  is  still  rich  in  the  possibilities  of  pleasure. 
Suppose  he  could  take  one  meal  so  compact 
and  comprehensive  that  he  should  never 
hunger  any  more  ;  suppose  him,  at  a  glance, 
to  take  in  all  the  features  of  the  world  and 
allay  the  desire  for  knowledge  ;  suppose  him 
to  do  the  like  in  any  province  of  experience 
— would  not  that  man  be  in  a  poor  way  for 
amusement  ever  after  ? 

One  who  goes  touring  on  foot  with  a 
single  volume  in  his  knapsack  reads  with 
circumspection,  pausing  often  to  reflect,  and 
often  laying  the  book  down  to  contemplate 
the  landscape  or  the  prints  in  the  inn  parlour; 
for  he  fears  to  come  to  an  end  of  his  enter- 
tamment,  and  be  left  companionless  on  the 
last  stages  of  his  journey.  A  young  fellow 
recently  finished  the  works  of  Thomas  Carlyle, 
winding  up,  if  we  remember  aright,  with  the 
ten   note-books   upon    Frederick   the   Great 


El  Dorado  175 

"What!"  cried  the  young  fellow,  in  conster- 
nation, "  is  there  no  more  Carlyle  ?  Am  I 
left  to  the  daily  papers  ?"  A  more  celebrated 
instance  is  that  of  Alexander,  who  wept 
bitterly  because  he  had  no  more  worlds  to 
subdue.  And  when  Gibbon  had  finished  the 
Decline  and  Fall,  he  had  only  a  few  moments 
of  joy  ;  and  it  was  with  a  "  sober  melancholy" 
that  he  parted  from  his  labours. 

Happily  we  all  shoot  at  the  moon  with 
ineffectual  arrows ;  our  hopes  are  set  on 
inaccessible  El  Dorado  ;  we  come  to  an  end 
of  nothing  here  below.  Interests  are  only 
plucked  up  to  sow  themselves  again,  like 
mustard.  You  would  think,  when  the  child 
was  born,  there  would  be  an  end  to  trouble  ; 
and  yet  it  is  only  the  beginning  of  fresh 
anxieties;  and  when  you  have  seen  it  through 
its  teething  and  its  education,  and  at  last  its 
marriage,  alas  !  it  is  only  to  have  new  fears, 
new  quivering  sensibilities,  with  every  day ; 
and  the  health  of  your  children's  children 
grows  as  touching  a  concern  as  that  of  your 
own.     Again,  when  you  have  married  your 


r  76  EL  Dorado 

wife,  you  would  think  you  were  got  upon  a 
hilltop,  and  might  begin  to  go  downward  by 
nn  easy  slope.  But  you  have  only  ended 
courting  to  begin  marriage.  Falling  in  love 
and  winning  love  are  often  difficult  tasks  to 
overbearing  and  rebellious  spirits  ;  but  to 
keep  in  love  is  also  a  business  of  some  im- 
portance, to  which  both  man  and  wife  must 
bring  kindness  and  goodwill.  The  true 
love  story  commences  at  the  altar,  when 
there  lies  before  the  married  pair  a  most 
beautiful  contest  of  wisdom  and  generosity, 
and  a  life-long  struggle  towards  an  unattain- 
able ideal.  Unattainable  ?  Ay,  surely  un- 
attainable, from  the  very  fact  that  they  are 
two  instead  of  one. 

"  Of  making  books  there  is  no  end,"  com- 
plained the  Preacher  ;  and  did  not  perceive 
how  highly  he  was  praising  letters  as  an 
occupation.  There  is  no  end,  indeed,  to 
making  books  or  experiments,  or  to  travel, 
or  to  gathering  wealth.  Problem  gives  rise 
to  problem.  We  may  study  for  ever,  and 
we  are  never  as  learned  as  we  would.     We 


El  Dorado  177 

have  never  made  a  statue  worthy  of  our 
dreams.  And  when  we  have  discovered  a 
continent,  or  crossed  a  chain  of  mountains,  it 
is  only  to  find  another  ocean  or  another 
plain  upon  the  further  side.  In  the  infinite 
universe  there  is  room  for  our  swiftest  dili- 
gence and  to  spare.  It  is  not  like  the  works 
of  Carlyle,  which  can  be  read  to  an  end. 
Even  in  a  corner  of  it,  in  a  private  park,  or 
in  the  neighbourhood  of  a  single  hamlet, 
the  weather  and  the  seasons  keep  so  deftly 
changing  that  although  we  walk  there  for  a 
lifetime  there  will  be  always  something  new 
to  startle  and  delight  us. 

f   There  is  only  one  wish  realisable  on  the 

learth ;  only  one  thing  that  can  be  perfectly 

attained  :    Death.      And   from    a   variety   of 

circumstances   we   have   no    one   to   tell    us 

whether  it  be  worth  attaining. 

A  strange  picture  we  make  on  our  way  to 
our  chimaeras,  ceaselessly  marching,  grudging 
ourselves  the  time  for  rest ;  indefatigable, 
adventurous  pioneers.  It  is  true  that  we 
shall  never  reach  the  goal ;  it  is  even  more 

N 


1/8  El  Dorado 

than  probable  that  there  is  no  such  pla:e ; 
and  if  we  lived  for  centuries  and  were  en- 
dowed with  the  powers  of  a  god,  we  should 
find  ourselves  not  much  nearer  what  we 
wanted  at  the  end.  O  toiling  hands  of 
mortals !  O  unwearied  feet,  travelling  ye 
know  not  whither!  Soon,  soon,  it  seems  to 
you,  you  must  come  forth  on  some  conspicu- 
ous hilltop,  and  but  a  little  way  further, 
against  the  setting  sun,  descry  the  spires  of 
El  Dorado.  Little  do  ye  know  your  own 
blessedness  ;  for  to  travel  hopefully  is  a  better 
thing  than  to  arrive,  and  the  true  success  is 
to  labour. 


THE  ENGLISH  ADMIRALS 

**  Whether  it  be  wise  in  men  to  do  such  actions  or  no,  I 
am  sure  it  is  so  in  States  to  honour  them." — Sir  William 
Temple. 

'T'HERE  is  one  story  of  the  wars  of  Rome 
which  I  have  always  very  much  envied 
for  England.  Germanicus  was  going  down 
at  the  head  of  the  legions  into  a  dangerous 
river — on  the  opposite  bank  the  woods  were 
full  of  Germans — when  there  flew  out  seven 
great  eagles  which  seemed  to  marshal  the 
Romans  on  their  way  ;  they  did  not  pause 
or  waver,  but  disappeared  into  the  forest 
where  the  enemy  lay  concealed.  "  Forward  !" 
cried  Germanicus,  with  a  fine  rhetorical 
inspiration,  "  Forward  !  and  follow  the  Roman 
birds."  It  would  be  a  very  heavy  spirit  that 
did  not  give  a  leap  at  such  a  signal,  and  a 


i8o  The  English  Admirals 

\try  timorous  one  that  continued  to  have 
any  doubt  of  success.  To  appropriate  the 
eagles  as  fellow-countrymen  was  to  make 
imaginary  allies  of  the  forces  of  nature  ;  the 
Roman  Empire  and  its  military  fortunes,  and 
along  with  these  the  prospects  of  those 
individual  Roman  legionaries  now  fording  a 
river  in  Germany,  looked  altogether  greater 
and  more  hopeful.  It  is  a  kind  of  illusion 
easy  to  produce.  A  particular  shape  of 
cloud,  the  appearance  of  a  particular  star, 
the  holiday  of  some  particular  saint,  anything 
in  short  to  remind  the  combatants  of  patriotic 
legends  or  old  successes,  may  be  enough  to 
change  the  issue  of  a  pitched  battle  ;  for  it 
gives  to  the  one  party  a  feeling  that  Right 
and  the  larger  interests  are  with  them. 

If  an  Englishman  wishes  to  have  such  a 
feeling,  it  must  be  about  the  sea.  The  lion 
is  nothing  to  us  ;  he  has  not  been  taken  to 
the  hearts  of  the  people,  and  naturalised  as 
an  English  emblem.  We  know  right  well 
that  a  lion  would  fall  foul  of  us  as  grimly  as 
he  would  of  a  Frenchman  or  a  Moldavian 


The  Eno;lish  Ad?iz{rals  i8i 

Jew,  and  we  do  not  carry  him  before  us  in 
the  smoke  of  battle.  But  the  sea  is  our 
approach  and  bulwark  ;  it  has  been  the  scene 
of  our  greatest  triumphs  and  dangers  ;  and 
we  are  accustomed  in  lyrical  strains  to  claim 
it  as  our  own.  The  prostrating  experiences 
of  foreigners  between  Calais  and  Dover  have 
always  an  agreeable  side  to  English  prepos- 
sessions. A  man  from  Bedfordshire,  who 
does  not  know  one  end  of  the  ship  from  the 
other  until  she  begins  to  move,  swaggers 
among  such  persons  with  a  sense  of  hereditary 
nautical  experience.  To  suppose  yourself 
endowed  with  natural  parts  for  the  sea 
because  you  are  the  countryman  of  Blake 
and  mighty  Nelson,  is  perhaps  just  as  un- 
warrantable as  to  imagine  Scotch  extraction 
a  sufficient  guarantee  that  you  will  look  well 
in  a  kilt.  But  the  feeling  is  there,  and  seated 
beyond  the  reach  of  argument.  We  should 
consider  ourselves  unworthy  of  our  descent  if 
we  did  not  share  the  arrogance  of  our  pro- 
genitors, and  please  ourselves  with  the  pre- 
tension that  the  sea  is  English.     Even  where 


!82  The  English  Admirals 

it  is  looked  upon  by  the  guns  and  battlements 
of  another  nation  we  regard  it  as  a  kind  o! 
English  cemetery,  where  the  bones  of  our 
seafaring  fathers  take  their  rest  until  the  last 
trumpet ;  for  I  suppose  no  other  nation  has 
lost  as  many  ships,  or  sent  as  many  brave 
fellows  to  the  bottom. 

There  is  nowhere  such  a  background  for 
neroism  as  the  noble,  terrifying,  and  pictur- 
esque conditions  of  some  of  our  sea  fights. 
Hawke's  battle  in  the  tempest,  and  Aboukir 
at  the  moment  when  the  French  Admiral 
blew  up,  reach  the  limit  of  what  is  imposing 
to  the  imagination.  And  our  naval  annals 
owe  some  of  their  interest  to  the  fantastic 
and  beautiful  appearance  of  old  warships 
and  the  romance  that  invests  the  sea  and 
everything  sea-going  in  the  eyes  of  English 
lads  on  a  half-holiday  at  the  coast  Nay, 
and  what  we  know  of  the  misery  between 
decks  enhances  the  bravery  of  what  was  done 
by  giving  it  something  for  contrast.  We 
like  to  know  that  these  bold  and  honest 
fellows  contrived  to  live,  and  to  keep  bold 


The  English  Admirals         183 

and  honest,  among  absurd  and  vile  surround- 
inga  No  reader  can  forget  the  description 
of  the  Thunder  in  Roderick  Random :  the 
disorderly  tyranny  ;  the  cruelty  and  dirt  of 
officers  and  men  ;  deck  after  deck,  each  with 
some  new  object  of  offence ;  the  hospital, 
where  the  hammocks  were  huddled  together 
with  but  fourteen  inches  space  for  each  ;  the 
cockpit,  far  under  water,  where,  "in  an  in- 
tolerable stench,"  the  spectacled  steward  kept 
the  accounts  of  the  different  messes  ;  and 
the  canvas  enclosure,  six  feet  square,  in  which 
Morgan  made  flip  and  salmagundi,  smoked 
his  pipe,  sang  his  Welsh  songs,  and  swore 
his  queer  Welsh  imprecations.  There  are 
portions  of  this  business  on  board  the  Thunder 
over  which  the  reader  passes  lightly  and 
hurriedly,  like  a  traveller  in  a  malarious 
country.  It  is  easy  enough  to  understand 
the  opinion  of  Dr.  Johnson  :  "  Why,  sir,"  he 
said,  "  no  man  will  be  a  sailor  who  has 
contrivance  enough  to  get  himself  into  a  jail." 
You  would  fancy  any  one's  spirit  would  die 
out  under  such  an  accumulation  of  darkness, 


1 84  The  English  Admirals 

noisomeness,  and  injustice,  above  all  when  he 
had  not  come  there  of  his  own  free  will,  but 
under  the  cutlasses  and  bludgeons  of  the 
press-gang.  But  perhaps  a  watch  on  deck 
in  the  sharp  sea  air  put  a  man  on  his  mettle 
again ;  a  battle  must  have  been  a  capital 
relief ;  and  prize-money,  bloodily  earned  and 
grossly  squandered,  opened  the  doors  of  the 
prison  for  a  twinkling.  Somehow  or  other, 
at  least,  this  worst  of  possible  lives  could  not 
overlie  the  spirit  and  gaiety  of  our  sailors  ; 
they  did  their  duty  as  though  they  had  some 
interest  in  the  fortune  of  that  country  which 
so  cruelly  oppressed  them,  they  served  their 
guns  merrily  when  it  came  to  fighting,  and 
they  had  the  readiest  ear  for  a  bold,  honour- 
able sentiment,  of  any  class  of  men  the  world 
ever  produced. 

Most  men  of  high  destinies  have  high- 
sounding  names.  Pym  and  Habakkuk  may 
do  pretty  well,  but  they  must  not  think  to 
cope  with  the  Crom wells  and  Isaiahs.  And 
you  could  not  find  a  better  case  in  point 
than  that  of  the  English  Admirals.     Drake 


The  English  Admirals         185 

and  Rooke  and  Hawke  are  picked  names 
for  men  of  execution.  Frobisher,  Rodney, 
Boscawen,  Foul-Weather,  Jack  Byron,  are  all 
good  to  catch  the  eye  in  a  page  of  a  naval 
history.  Cloudesley  Shovel  is  a  mouthful  of 
quaint  and  sounding  syllables.  Benbow  has 
a  bulldog  quality  that  suits  the  man's  char- 
acter, and  it  takes  us  back  to  those  English 
archers  who  were  his  true  comrades  for 
plainness,  tenacity,  and  pluck.  Raleigh  is 
spirited  and  martial,  and  signifies  an  act  of 
bold  conduct  in  the  field.  It  is  impossible 
to  judge  of  Blake  or  Nelson,  no  names 
current  among  men  being  worthy  of  such 
heroes.  But  still  it  is  odd  enough,  and  very 
appropriate  in  this  connection,  that  the  latter 
was  greatly  taken  with  his  Sicilian  title. 
^'  The  signification,  perhaps,  pleased  him,"  says 
Southey  ;  "  Duke  of  Thunder  was  what  in 
Dahomey  would  have  been  called  a  strong 
name ;  it  was  to  a  sailor's  taste,  and  certainly 
to  no  man  could  it  be  more  applicable." 
Admiral  in  itself  is  one  of  the  most  satis- 
factory of  distinctions  ;  it  has  a  noble  sound 


1 86  The  English  A dmir ah 

and  a  veiy  proud  history ;  and  Columbus 
thought  so  highly  of  it,  that  he  enjoined  his 
heirs  to  sign  themselves  by  that  title  as  long 
as  the  house  should  last. 

But  it  is  the  spirit  of  the  men,  and  not 
their  names,  that  I  wish  to  speak  about  in 
this  paper.  That  spirit  is  truly  English  ; 
they,  and  not  Tennyson's  cotton-spinners  or 
Mr.  D'Arcy  Thompson's  Abstract  Bagman, 
are  the  true  and  typical  Englishmen.  There 
may  be  more  head  of  bagmen  in  the  country, 
but  human  beings  are  reckoned  by  number 
only  in  political  constitutions.  And  the 
Admirals  are  typical  in  the  full  force  of  the 
word.  They  are  splendid  examples  of  virtue, 
indeed,  but  of  a  virtue  in  which  most  English- 
men can  claim  a  moderate  share  ;  and  what 
we  admire  in  their  lives  is  a  sort  of  apotheosis 
of  ourselves.  Almost  everybody  in  our  land 
except  humanitarians  and  a  few  persons 
whose  youth  has  been  depressed  by  excep- 
tionally aesthetic  surroundings,  can  understand 
and  sympathise  with  an  Admiral  or  a  prize- 
fighter.     I  do  not  wish  to  bracket  Itenbow 


The  English  Admirals         187 

and  Tom  Cribb  ;  but,  depend  upon  it,  they 
are  practically  bracketed  for  admiration  in 
the  minds  of  many  frequenters  of  ale-houses. 
If  you  told  them  about  Germanicus  and  the 
eagles,  or  Regulus  going  back  to  Carthage^ 
they  would  very  likely  fall  asleep  ;  but  tell 
them  about  Harry  Pearce  and  Jem  Belcher, 
or  about  Nelson  and  the  Nile,  and  they  put 
down  their  pipes  to  listen.  I  have  by  me  a 
copy  of  Boxiana,  on  the  fly-leaves  of  which 
a  youthful  member  of  the  fancy  kept  a 
chronicle  of  remarkable  events  and  an  obitu- 
ary of  great  men.  Here  we  find  piously 
chronicled  the  demise  of  jockeys,  watermen, 
and  pugilists — Johnny  Moore,  of  the  Liver- 
pool Prize  Ring ;  Tom  Spring,  aged  fifty- 
six  ;  "  Pierce  Egan,  senior,  writer  of  Boxiana 
and  other  sporting  works  " — and  among  all 
these,  the  Duke  of  Wellington !  If  Benbow 
had  lived  in  the  time  of  this  annalist,  do  you 
suppose  his  name  would  not  have  been  added 
to  the  glorious  roll  ?  In  short,  we  do  not 
all  feel  warmly  towards  Wesley  or  Laud,  we 
cannot  all   take  pleasure  in  Paradise  Lost; 


1 88  The  Enzlish  Admirals 

but  there  are  certain  common  sentiments  and 
touches  of  nature  by  which  the  whole  nation 
is  made  to  feel  kinship.  A  little  while  ago 
everybody,  from  Hazlitt  and  John  Wilson 
down  to  the  imbecile  creature  who  scribbled 
his  register  on  the  fly-leaves  of  Boxiana,  felt 
a  more  or  less  shamefaced  satisfaction  in  the 
exploits  of  prize-fighters.  And  the  exploits 
of  the  Admirals  are  popular  to  the  same 
degree,  and  tell  in  all  ranks  of  society.  Their 
sayings  and  doings  stir  English  blood  like 
the  sound  of  a  trumpet ;  and  if  the  Indian 
Empire,  the  trade  of  London,  and  all  the 
outward  and  visible  ensigns  of  our  greatness 
should  pass  away,  we  should  still  leave 
behind  us  a  durable  monument  of  what  we 
were  in  these  sayings  and  doings  of  the 
English  Admirals. 

Duncan,  lying  off  the  Texel  with  his  own 
flagship,  the  Venerable^  and  only  one  other 
vessel,  heard  that  the  whole  Dutch  fleet  was 
putting  to  sea.  He  told  Captain  Hotham 
to  anchor  alongside  of  him  in  the  narrowest 
part  of  the  channel,  and   fight  hi?  vessel  till 


The  EnglisJi  Adtnirals         189 

she  sank.  "  I  have  taken  the  depth  of  the 
water,"  added  he,  "  and  when  the  Vejiet  able 
goes  down,  my  flag  will  still  fly."  And  you 
observe  this  is  no  naked  Viking  in  a  pre- 
historic period  ;  but  a  Scotch  member  of 
Parliament,  with  a  smattering  of  the  classics, 
a  telescope,  a  cocked  hat  of  great  size,  and 
flannel  underclothing.  In  the  same  spirit, 
Nelson  went  into  Aboukir  with  six  colours 
flying  ;  so  that  even  if  five  were  shot  away, 
it  should  not  be  imagined  he  had  struck. 
He  too  must  needs  wear  his  four  stars  outside 
his  Admiral's  frock,  to  be  a  butt  for  sharp- 
shooters. "  In  honour  I  gained  them,"  he 
said  to  objectors,  adding  with  sublime  illogi- 
cality, "  in  honour  I  will  die  with  them." 
Captain  Douglas  of  the  Royal  Oak,  when 
the  Dutch  fired  his  vessel  in  the  Thames, 
sent  his  men  ashore,  but  was  burned  along 
with  her  himself  rather  than  desert  his  post 
without  orders.  Just  then,  perhaps  the 
Merry  Monarch  was  chasing  a  moth  round 
the  supper-table  with  the  ladies  of  his  court. 
When  Raleigh  sailed  into  Cadiz,  and  all  the 


190  The  English  Admirals 

forts  and   ships  opened  fire  on  him  at  once, 
he  scorned  to  shoot  a  gun,  and  made  answer 
with  a  flourish  of  insulting  trumpets.      I  like 
this  bravado  better  than  the  wisest  dispositions 
to  insure  victory  ;  it  comes  from  the  heart 
and  goes  to  it.     God  has  made  nobler  heroes, 
but  he  never  made  a  finer  gentleman  than 
Walter  Raleigh.      And  as  our  Admirals  were 
full  of  heroic  superstitions,  and  had  a  strutting 
and  vainglorious  style  of  fight,  so  they  dis- 
covered a  startling  eagerness  for  battle,  and 
courted  war  like  a  mistress.      When  the  news 
came  to  Essex  before  Cadiz  that  the  attack 
had  been  decided,  he  threw  his  hat  into  the 
sea.      It  is  in  this  way  that  a  schoolboy  hears 
of  a  half-holiday ;  but   this  was  a   bearded 
man  of  great  possessions  who  had  just  been 
allowed  to  risk  his  life.      Benbow  could  not 
lie  still  in  his  bunk  after  he  had  lost  his  leg ; 
he  must  be  on  deck  in  a  basket  to  direct 
and   animate  the  fight.     I  said   they  loved 
war  like  a  mistress ;  yet  I  think  there  are 
not  many  mistresses  we  should  continue  to 
woo  under  similar  circumstances.    Trowbridge 


The  English  Ad77drals         191 

went  ashore  with  the  Cidloden,  and  was  able 
to  take  no  part  in  the  battle  of  the  Nile. 
"  The  merits  of  that  ship  and  her  gallant 
captain."  wrote  Nelson  to  the  Admiralty, 
"  are  too  well  known  to  benefit  by  anything 
I  could  say.  Her  misfortune  was  great  in 
getting  aground,  tvhile  her  mo7-e  fortunate 
compayiions  were  in  the  full  tide  of  happiness^ 
This  is  a  notable  expression,  and  depicts  the 
whole  great-hearted,  big-spoken  stock  of  the 
English  Admirals  to  a  hair.  It  was  to  be 
"  in  the  full  tide  of  happiness  "  for  Nelson  to 
destroy  five  thousand  five  hundred  and 
twenty-five  of  his  fellow-creatures,  and  have 
his  own  scalp  torn  open  by  a  piece  of  lang- 
ridge  shot.  Hear  him  again  at  Copenhagen  : 
"  A  shot  through  the  mainmast  knocked  the 
splinters  about ;  and  he  observed  to  one  of 
his  officers  with  a  smile,  '  It  is  warm  worki 
and  this  may  be  the  last  to  any  of  us  at  any 
moment ;'  and  then,  stopping  short  at  the 
gangway,  added,  with  emotion,  '  But,  mark 
ycu — /  zvould  not  be  elsezuhere  for  thousands.'" 
I    must   tell    one   more   story,  which   has 


192  The  English  Admirals 

lately  been  made  familiar  to  us  all,  and  that 
in  one  of  the  noblest  ballads  in  the  English 
language.  I  had  written  my  tame  prose 
abstract,  I  shall  beg  the  reader  to  believe, 
when  I  had  no  notion  that  the  sacred  bard 
designed  an  immortality  for  Greenville.  Sir 
Richard  Greenville  was  Vice -Admiral  to 
Lord  Thomas  Howard,  and  lay  off  the 
Azores  with  the  English  squadron  in  1591. 
He  was  a  noted  tyrant  to  his  crew  :  a  dark, 
bullyirg  fellow  apparently  ;  and  it  is  related 
of  him  that  he  would  chew  and  swallow 
wineglasses,  by  way  of  convivial  levity,  till 
the  blood  ran  out  of  his  mouth.  When  the 
Spanish  fleet  of  fifty  sail  came  within  sight 
of  the  English,  his  ship,  the  Revenge,  was  the 
last  to  weigh  anchor,  and  was  so  far  circum- 
vented by  the  Spaniards,  that  there  were  but 
two  courses  open — either  to  turn  her  back 
upon  the  enemy  or  sail  through  one  of  his 
squadrons.  The  first  alternative  Greenville 
dismissed  as  dishonourable  to  himself,  his 
country,  and  her  Majesty's  ship.  Accordingly, 
he   chose   the    latter,   and   steered   into   tha 


The  English  Admirals         193 

Spanish  armament.  Several  vessels  he  forced 
to  luff  and  fall  under  his  lee  ;  until,  about 
three  o'clock  of  the  afternoon,  a  great  ship  of 
three  decks  of  ordnance  took  the  wind  out  of 
his  sails,  and  immediately  boarded.  Thence- 
forward, and  all  night  long,  the  Revenge  held 
her  own  single-handed  against  the  Spaniards. 
As  one  ship  was  beaten  off,  another  took  its 
place.  She  endured,  according  to  Raleigh's 
computation,  "  eight  hundred  shot  of  great 
artillery,  besides  many  assaults  and  entries." 
By  morning  the  powder  was  spent,  the  pikes 
all  broken,  not  a  stick  was  standing,  "nothing 
left  overhead  either  for  flight  or  defence  ;" 
six  feet  of  water  in  the  hold  ;  almost  all  the 
men  hurt ;  and  Greenville  himself  in  a  dying 
condition.  To  bring  them  to  this  pass,  a 
fleet  of  fifty  sail  had  been  mauling  them  for 
fifteen  hours,  the  Admiral  of  the  Hulks  and 
the  Ascension  of  Seville  had  both  gone  down 
alongside,  and  two  other  vessels  had  taken 
refuge  on  shore  in  a  sinking  state.  In 
Hawke's  words,  they  had  "taken  a  great 
deal  of  drubbing."     The  captain   and  crew 


194         The  English  Admirals 

thought  they  had  done  about  enough  ;  biirt 
Greenville  was  not  of  this  opinion  ;  he  gave 
orders  to  the  master  gunner,  whom  he  knew 
to  be  a  fellow  after  his  own  stamp,  to  scuttle 
the  Revenge  where  she  lay.  The  others,  who 
were  not  mortally  wounded  like  the  Admiral, 
interfered  with  some  decision,  locked  the 
master  gunner  in  his  cabin,  after  having 
deprived  him  of  his  sword,  for  he  manifested 
an  intention  to  kill  himself  if  he  were  not  to 
sink  the  ship ;  and  sent  to  the  Spaniards  to 
demand  terms.  These  were  granted.  The 
second  or  third  day  after,  Greenville  died  of 
his  wounds  aboard  the  Spanish  flagship, 
leaving  his  contempt  upon  the  "  traitors  and 
dogs"  who  had  not  chosen  to  do  as  he  did, 
and  engage  fifty  vessels,  well  found  and  fully 
manned,  with  six  inferior  craft  ravaged  by 
sickness  and  short  of  stores.  He  at  least,  he 
said,  had  done  his  duty  as  he  was  bound  to 
do,  and  looked  for  everlasting  fame. 

Some  one  said  to  me  the  other  day  that 
they  considered  this  story  to  be  of  a  pestilent 
example.     I  am  not  inclined  to  imagine  we 


The  English  Admirals         195 

shall  ever  be  put  into  any  practical  difficulty 
from  a  superfluity  of  Greenvilles.  And 
besides,  I  demur  to  the  opinion.  The  worth  of 
such  actions  is  not  a  thing  to  be  decided  in 
a  quaver  of  sensibility  or  a  flush  of  righteous 
commonsense.  The  man  who  wished  to 
make  the  ballads  of  his  country,  coveted  a 
small  matter  compared  to  what  Richard 
Greenville  accomplished.  I  wonder  how 
many  peopie  have  been  inspired  by  this  mad 
story,  and  how  many  battles  have  been 
actually  won  for  England  in  the  spirit  thus 
engendered.  It  is  only  with  a  measure  of 
habitual  foolhardiness  that  you  can  be  sure, 
in  the  common  run  of  men,  of  courage  on  a 
reasonable  occasion.  An  army  or  a  fleet,  if 
it  is  not  led  by  quixotic  fancies,  will  not  be 
led  far  by  terror  of  the  Provost  Marshal. 
Even  German  warfare,  in  addition  to  maps 
and  telegraphs,  is  not  above  employing  the 
Wacht  am  Rhein.  Nor  is  it  only  in  the  pro- 
fession of  arms  that  such  stories  may  do  good 
to  a  man.  In  this  desperate  and  gleeful 
fighting,  whether  it  is  Greenville  or  Benbow^ 


196  The  English  Admirals 

?Iawke  or  Nelson,  who  flies  his  coloui's  in 
the  ship,  we  see  men  brought  to  the  test  and 
giving  proof  of  what  we  call  heroic  feeling. 
Prosperous  humanitarians  tell  me,  in  my  club 
smoking-room,  that  they  are  a  prey  to  pro- 
digious heroic  feelings,  and  that  it  costs  them 
more  nobility  of  soul  to  do  nothing  in  parti- 
cular, than  would  carry  on  all  the  wars,  by 
sea  or  land,  of  bellicose  humanity.  It  may 
very  well  be  so,  and  yet  not  touch  the  point 
in  question.  For  what  I  desire  is  to  see 
some  of  this  nobility  brought  face  to  face 
with  me  in  an  inspiriting  achievement  A 
man  may  talk  smoothly  over  a  cigar  in  my 
club  smoking-room  from  now  to  the  Day  of 
Judgment,  without  adding  anything  to  man- 
kind's treasury  of  illustrious  and  encouraging 
examples.  It  is  not  over  the  virtues  of  a 
curate-and-tea-party  novel,  that  people  are 
abashed  into  high  resolutions.  It  may  be 
because  their  hearts  are  crass,  but  to  stir 
them  properly  they  must  have  men  entering 
into  glory  with  some  pomp  and  circumstance. 
And   that  is  why  these  stories  of  our  sea* 


The  English  Admirals         197 

captains,  printed,  so  to  speak,  in  capitals,  and 
full  of  bracing  moral  influence,  are  more 
valuable  to  England  than  any  material  bene- 
fit in  all  the  books  of  political  economy  be- 
tween Westminster  and  Birmingham.  Green- 
ville chewing  wineglasses  at  table  makes  no 
very  pleasant  figure,  any  more  than  a  thou- 
sand other  artists  when  they  are  viewed  in 
the  body,  or  met  in  private  life  ;  but  his 
work  of  art,  his  finished  tragedy,  is  an  eloquent 
performance ;  and  I  contend  it  ought  not  I 
only  to  enliven  men  of  the  sword  as  they  go 
into  battle,  but  send  back  merchant  clerks 
with  more  heart  and  spirit  to  their  book- 
keeping by  double  entry. 

There  is  another  question  which  seems 
bound  up  in  this  ;  and  that  is  Temple's 
problem  :  whether  if  was  wise  of  Douglas  to 
burn  with  the  Royal  Oak  ?  and  by  implica- 
tion, what  it  was  that  made  him  do  so  ? 
Many  will  tell  you  it  was  the  desire  of  fame. 

"  To  what  do  Caesar  and  Alexander  owe 
the  infinite  grandeur  of  their  renown,  but  to 
fortune  ?     How  many  men    has   she  extin- 


1 98  The  English  Admirals 

guished  in  the  beginning  of  their  progresSt 
of  whom  we  have  no  knowledge  ;  who 
brought  as  much  courage  to  the  work  as 
they,  if  their  adverse  hap  had  not  cut  them 
off  in  the  first  sally  of  their  arms  ?  Amongst 
so  many  and  so  great  dangers,  I  do  not 
remember  to  have  an3^where  read  that  Caesar 
was  ever  wounded  ;  a  thousand  have  fallen 
in  less  dangers  than  the  least  of  these  he 
went  through.  A  great  many  brave  actions 
must  be  expected  to  be  performed  without 
witness,  for  one  that  comes  to  some  notice. 
A  man  is  not  always  at  the  top  of  a  breach, 
or  at  the  head  of  an  army  in  the  sight  of 
his  general,  as  upon  a  platform.  He  is 
often  surprised  between  the  hedge  and  the 
ditch  ;  he  must  run  the  hazard  of  his  life 
against  a  henroost ;  he  must  dislodge  four 
rascally  musketeers  out  of  a  barn  ;  he  must 
prick  out  single  from  his  party,  as  necessity 
arises,  and  meet  adventures  alone." 

Thus  far  Montaigne,  in  a  characteristic 
essay  on  Glory.  Where  death  is  certain,  as 
in   the   cases    of    Douglas   or   Greenville,   it 


The  English  Admirals         199 

seems  all  one  from  a  personal  point  of  view. 
The  man  who  lost  his  life  against  a  henioost, 
is  in  the  same  pickle  with  him  who  lost  his 
life  against  a  fortified  place  of  the  first  order. 
Whether  he  has  missed  a  peerage  or  only 
the  corporal's  stripes,  it  is  all  one  if  he  has 
missed  them  and  is  quietly  in  the  grave. 
It  was  by  a  hazard  that  we  learned  the 
conduct  of  the  four  marines  of  the  Wager. 
There  was  no  room  for  these  brave  fellows  in 
the  boat,  and  they  were  left  behind  upon  the 
island  to  a  certain  death.  They  were  soldiers, 
they  said,  and  knew  well  enough  it  was  their 
business  to  die  ;  and  as  their  comrades 
pulled  away,  they  stood  upon  the  beach, 
gave  three  cheers,  and  cried  "  God  bless  the 
king  1"  Now,  one  or  two  of  those  who  were 
in  the  boat  escaped,  against  all  likelihood, 
to  tell  the  story.  That  was  a  great  thing 
for  us  ;  but  surely  it  cannot,  by  any  possible 
twisting  of  human  speech,  be  construed  into 
anything  great  for  the  marines.  You  may 
suppose,  if  you  like,  that  they  died  hoping 
their  behaviour  would  not  be  forgotten  ;  or 


200  The  English  Admirals 

you  may  suppose  they  thought  nothing  on 
the  subject,  which  is  much  more  Hlcely. 
What  can  be  the  signification  of  the  word 
"fame"  to  a  private  of  marines,  who  cannot 
read  and  knows  nothing  of  past  history 
beyond  the  reminiscences  of  his  grandmother? 
But  whichever  supposition  you  make,  the 
fact  is  unchanged.  They  died  while  the  ques- 
tion still  hung  in  the  balance  ;  and  I  suppose 
their  bones  were  already  white,  before  the 
winds  and  the  waves  and  the  humour  of 
Indian  chiefs  and  Spanish  governors  had 
decided  whether  they  were  to  be  unknown 
and  useless  martyrs  or  honoured  heroes. 
Indeed,  I  believe  this  is  the  lesson :  if  it  is 
for  fame  that  men  do  brave  actions,  they 
are  only  silly  fellows  after  all. 

It  is  at  best  but  a  pettifogging,  pickthank 
business  to  decompose  actions  into  little 
personal  motives,  and  explain  heroism  away. 
The  Abstract  Bagman  will  grow  like  an 
Admiral  at  heart,  not  by  ungrateful  carping, 
but  in  a  heat  of  admiration.  But  there  ia 
another   theory   of   the   personal    motive   in 


The  English  Admirals         201 

these  fine  sayings  and  doings,  which  I  believe 
to  be  true  and  wholesome.  People  usually 
do  things,  and  suffer  martyrdoms,  because 
they  have  an  inclination  that  way.  The 
best  artist  is  not  the  man  who  fixes  his  eye 
on  posterity,  but  the  one  who  loves  the 
practice  of  his  art  And  instead  of  having 
a  taste  for  being  successful  merchants  and 
retiring  at  thirty,  some  people  have  a  taste 
for  high  and  what  we  call  heroic  forms  of 
excitement.  If  the  Admirals  courted  war 
like  a  mistress  ;  if,  as  the  drum  beat  to 
quarters,  the  sailors  came  gaily  out  of  the 
forecastle, — it  is  because  a  fight  is  a  period 
of  multiplied  and  intense  experiences,  and, 
by  Nelson's  computation,  worth  "  thousands  " 
to  any  one  who  has  a  heart  under  his  jacket 
If  the  marines  of  the  Wager  gave  three 
cheers  and  cried  "  God  bless  the  king,"  it 
was  because  they  liked  to  do  things  nobly 
for  their  own  satisfaction.  They  were  giving 
their  lives,  there  was  no  help  for  that ;  and 
they  made  it  a  point  of  self-respect  to  give 
them  handsomely.      And    there  were  never 


202  The  English  Adjnirals 

four  happier  marines  in  God's  woild  than 
these  four  at  that  moment.  If  it  was  worth 
thousands  to  be  at  the  Baltic,  I  wish  a 
Benthamite  arithmetician  would  calculate 
how  much  it  was  worth  to  be  one  of  these 
four  marines  ;  or  how  much  their  story  is 
worth  to  each  of  us  who  read  it.  And  mark 
you,  undemonstrative  men  would  have  spoiled 
the  situation.  The  finest  action  is  the  better 
for  a  piece  of  purple.  If  the  soldiers  of  the 
Birkenliead  had  not  gone  down  in  line,  or 
these  marines  of  the  Wager  had  walked 
away  simply  into  the  island,  like  plenty  of 
other  brave  fellows  in  the  like  circumstances, 
my  Benthamite  arithmetician  would  assign  a 
,far  lower  value  to  the  two  stories.  We  have 
to  desire  a  grand  air  in  our  heroes  ;  and 
such  a  knowledge  of  the  human  stage  as 
shall  make  them  put  the  dots  on  their  own  i's, 
and  leave  us  in  no  suspense  as  to  when  tiiey 
mean  to  be  heroic.  And  hence,  we  should 
congratulate  ourselves  upon  the  fact  that 
our  Admirals  were  not  only  great-hearted 
but  big-spoken. 


The  English  Admirals         203 

The  heroes  themselves  say,  as  often  as  not, 
that  fame  is  their  object  ;  but  I  do  not  think 
that  is  much  to  the  purpose.  People  generally 
say  what  they  have  been  taught  to  say  ; 
that  was  the  catchword  they  were  given  in 
youth  to  express  the  aims  of  their  way  of 
life ;  and  men  who  are  gaining  great  battles 
are  not  likely  to  take  much  trouble  in 
reviewing  their  sentiments  and  the  words 
in  which  they  were  told  to  express  them. 
Almost  every  person,  if  you  will  believe  him- 
self, holds  a  quite  different  theory  of  life 
from  the  one  on  which  he  is  patently  acting. 
And  the  fact  is,  fame  may  be  a  forethought 
and  an  afterthought,  but  it  is  too  abstract 
an  idea  to  move  people  greatly  in  moments 
of  swift  and  momentous  decision.  It  is  from 
something  more  immediate,  some  determina- 
tion of  blood  to  the  head,  some  trick  of  the 
fancy,  that  the  breach  is  stormed  or  the 
bold  word  spoken.  I  am  sure  a  fellow 
shooting  an  ugly  weir  in  a  canoe  has  exactly 
as  much  thought  about  fame  as  most  com- 
manders going  into  battle  ;  and  yet  the  action, 


204         T^h^  English  Admirals 

fall  out  how  it  will,  is  not  one  of  those  the 
muse  delights  to  celebrate.  Indeed  it  is 
difficult  to  see  why  the  fellow  does  a  thing 
so  nameless  and  yet  so  formidable  to  look 
at,  unless  on  the  theory  that  he  likes  it. 
1  suspect  that  is  why ;  and  I  suspect  it  is 
at  least  ten  per  cent  of  why  Lord  Beacons- 
field  and  Mr.  Gladstone  have  debated  so 
much  in  the  House  of  Commons,  and  why 
Burnaby  rode  to  Khiva  the  other  day,  and 
why  the  Admirals  courted  war  like  a 
mistress. 


SOME  PORTRAITS  BY 
RAEBURN 

'yHROUGH  the  initiative  of  a  prominent 
citizen,  Edinburgh  has  been  in  possession, 
for  some  autumn  weeks,  of  a  gallery  ol 
paintings  of  singular  merit  and  interest. 
They  were  exposed  in  the  apartments  of  the 
Scotch  Academy  ;  and  filled  those  who  are 
accustomed  to  visit  the  annual  spring  exhibi- 
tion, with  astonishment  and  a  sense  of  in- 
congruity. Instead  of  the  too  common  purple 
sunsets,  and  pea-green  fields,  and  distances 
executed  in  putty  and  hog's  lard,  he  beheld, 
looking  down  upon  him  from  the  walls  of 
room  after  room,  a  whole  army  of  wise,  grave, 
humorous,  capable,  or  beautiful  countenances, 
painted  simply  and  strongly  by  a  man  of 
genuine  instinct      It  was  a  complete  act  of 


2o6      Some  Fori  rails  by  Raeburn 

the  Human  Drawing-Room  Comedy.      Lords 
and    ladies,    soldiers    and    doctors,    hanging 
judges,  and  heretical  divines,  a  whole  genera- 
tion of  good   society  was  resuscitated  ;  and 
the  Scotchman  of  to-day  walked  about  among 
the  Scotchmen  of  two  generations  ago.     The 
moment   was    well    chosen,  neither  too   late 
nor  too  early.      The  people  who  sat  for  these 
/      pictures  are  not  yet  ancestors,  they  are  still 
relations.     They   are    not    yet    altogether   a 
part  of  the  dusty  past,  but  occupy  a  middle 
distance  within  cry  of  our  affections.      The 
little    child    who    looks    wonderingly   on   his 
grandfather's   watch    in    the    picture,  is   now 
the  veteran  Sheriff  emeritus  of  Perth.      And 
I  hear  a  stor}''  of  a  lady  who  returned  the 
other  day  to  Edinburgh,  after  an  absence  of 
sixty  years  :  "  I   could   see  none  of  my  old 
friends,"  she    said,  "  until    I    went   into   the 
Raeburn  Gallery,  and  found  them  all  there." 
It  would   be  difficult  to  say  whether  the 
collection  was  more  interesting  on  the  score  of 
unity  or  diversity.      Where  the  portraits  were 
all  of  the  same  period,  almost  all  of  the  same 


Some  Portraits  by  Raehurjt      207 

race,  and  all  from  the  same  brush,  there 
could  not  fail  to  be  many  points  of  similarity. 
And  yet  the  similarity  of  the  handling  seems 
to  throw  into  more  vigorous  relief  those 
personal  distinctions  which  Raeburn  was  so 
quick  to  seize.  He  was  a  born  painter  of 
portraits.  He  looked  people  shrewdly  be- 
tween the  eyes,  surprised  their  manners  in 
their  face,  and  had  possessed  himself  of  what 
was  essential  in  their  character  before  they 
had  been  many  minutes  in  his  studio.  What 
he  was  so  swift  to  perceive,  he  conveyed  to 
the  canvas  almost  in  the  moment  of  concep- 
tion. He  had  never  any  difficulty,  he  said, 
about  either  hands  or  faces.  About  draperies 
or  light  or  composition,  he  might  see  room 
for  hesitation  or  afterthought  But  a  face 
or  a  hand  was  something  plain  and  legible. 
There  were  no  two  ways  about  it,  any  more 
than  about  the  person's  name.  And  so  each 
of  his  portraits  are  not  only  (in  Doctor 
Johnson's  phrase,  aptly  quoted  on  the  cata- 
logue) "a  piece  of  history,"  but  a  piece  ol 
biography  into  the  bargain.      It  is  devoutly 


A 


208      So7ne  Portraits  by  Raebitrn 

to  be  wished  that  all  biography  were  equa''y 
amusing,  and  cari'Icd  its  own  credentials 
equally  upon  its  face.  These  portraits  are 
racier  than  many  anecdotes,  and  more  com- 
plete than  many  a  volume  of  sententious 
memoirs.  You  can  see  whether  you  get  a 
stronger  and  clearer  idea  of  Robertson  the 
historian  from  Raeburn's  palette  or  Dugald 
Stewart's  woolly  and  evasive  periods.  And 
then  the  portraits  are  both  signed  and 
countersigned.  For  you  have,  first,  the 
authority  of  the  artist,  whom  you  recognise 
as  no  mean  critic  of  the  looks  and  manners 
of  men  ;  and  next  you  have  the  tacit  aquies- 
cence  of  the  subject,  who  sits  looking  out 
upon  you  with  inimitable  innocence,  and 
apparently  under  the  impression  that  he  is 
in  a  room  by  himself  For  Raeburn  could 
plunge  at  once  through  all  the  constraint 
and  embarrassment  of  the  sitter,  and  present 
the  face,  clear,  open,  and  intelligent  as  at  the 
most  disengaged  moments.  This  is  best 
seen  in  portraits  where  the  sitter  is  repre- 
sented   in    some    appropriate    action :     Neii 


Some  Fori  raits  by  Raeburn      209 

Gow  with  his  fiddle,  Doctor  Spens  shooting 
an  arrow,  or  Lord  Bannatyne  hearing  a 
cause.  Above  all,  from  this  point  of  view, 
the  portrait  of  Lieutenant-Colonel  Lyon  is 
notable.  A  strange  enough  young  man, 
pink,  fat  about  the  lower  part  of  the  face, 
with  a  lean  forehead,  a  narrow  nose  and  a  fine 
nostril,  sits  with  a  drawing-board  upon  his 
knees  He  has  just  paused  to  render  him- 
self account  of  some  difficulty,  to  disentangle 
some  complication  of  line  or  compare  neigh- 
bouring values.  And  there,  without  any 
perceptible  wrinkling,  you  have  rendered  for 
you  exactly  the  fixed  look  in  the  eyes,  ana 
the  unconscious  compression  of  the  mouth, 
that  befit  and  signify  an  effort  of  the  kind. 
The  whole  pose,  the  whole  expression,  is 
absolutely  direct  and  simple.  You  are  ready 
to  take  your  oath  to  it  that  Colonel  Lyon 
had  no  idea  he  was  sitting  for  his  picture, 
and  thought  of  nothing  in  the  world  besides 
his  own  occupation  of  the  moment. 

Although  the  collection   did  not  embrace, 
I   understand,  nearly  the  whole  of  Raeburn's 


2 1  o      Sovie  Portraits  by  Raeburn 

works,  it  was  too  large  not  to  contain  some 
that  were  indifferent,  whether  as  works  of  art 
or  as  portraits.  Certainly  the  standard  was 
remarkably  high,  and  was  wonderfully  main- 
tained, but  there  were  one  or  two  pictures 
that  might  have  been  almost  as  well  away — 
one  or  two  that  seemed  wanting  in  salt,  and 
some  that  you  can  only  hope  were  not  suc- 
cessful likenesses.  Neither  of  the  portraits 
of  Sir  Walter  Scott,  for  instance,  were  very 
agreeable  to  look  upon.  You  do  not  care  to 
think  that  Scott  looked  quite  so  rustic  and 
puffy.  And  where  is  that  peaked  forehead 
which,  according  to  all  written  accounts  and 
many  portraits,  was  the  distinguishing  char- 
acteristic of  his  face  ?  Again,  in  spite  of  his 
own  satisfaction  and  in  spite  of  Dr.  John 
Brown,  I  cannot  consider  that  Raeburn  was 
very  happy  in  hands.  Without  doubt,  he 
could  paint  one  if  he  had  taken  the  trouble 
to  study  it ;  but  it  was  by  no  means  always 
that  he  gave  himself  the  trouble.  Look/ng 
round  one  of  these  rooms  hung  about  with 
his  portraits,  you  were  struck  with  the  array 


Some  Portraits  by  Raeburn      211 

of  expressive  faces,  as  compared  with  what 
you  may  have  seen  in  looking  round  a  toom 
full  of  living  people.  But  it  was  not  so  \J 
with  the  hands.  The  portraits  differed  from 
each  other  in  face  perhaps  ten  times  as  much 
as  they  differed  by  the  hand  ;  whereas  with 
living  people  the  two  go  pretty  much  together  ; 
and  where  one  is  remarkable,  the  other  will 
almost  certainly  not  be  commonplace. 

One  interesting  portrait  was  that  of  Duncan 
of  Camperdown.  He  stands  in  uniform  be- 
side a  table,  his  feet  slightly  straddled  with 
the  balance  of  an  old  sailor,  his  hand  poised 
upon  a  chart  by  the  finger  tips.  The  mouth 
is  pursed,  the  nostril  spread  and  drawn  up, 
the  eyebrows  very  highly  arched.  The 
cheeks  lie  along  the  jaw  in  folds  of  iron,  and 
have  the  redness  that  comes  from  much 
exposure  to  salt  sea  winds.  From  the  whole 
figure, attitude  and  countenance,  there  breathes 
something  precise  and  decisive,  something 
alert,  wiry,  and  strong.  You  can  understand, 
from  the  look  of  him,  that  sense,  not  so  much 
of  humour,  as  of  what  is  grimmest  and  driest 


2 1 2      Some  Portraits  by  Raebum 

in  pleasantry,  which  inspired  his  address 
before  the  fight  at  Camperdown.  He  had 
just  overtaken  the  Dutch  fleet  under  Admiral 
/  de  Winter.  "  Gentlemen,"  says  he,  "  you  see 
a  severe  winter  approaching ;  I  have  only  to 
advise  you  to  keep  up  a  good  fire."  Some- 
what of  this  same  spirit  of  adamantine 
drollery  must  have  supported  him  in  the 
days  of  the  mutiny  at  the  Nore,  when  he  lay 
off  the  Texel  with  his  own  flagship,  the 
Venerable,  and  only  one  other  vessel,  and 
kept  up  active  signals,  as  though  he  had  a 
powerful  fleet  in  the  offing,  to  intimidate  the 
Dutch. 

Another  portrait  which  irresistibly  attracted 
the  eye,  was  the  half-length  of  Robert 
M'Queen,  of  Braxfield,  Lord  Justice -Clerk, 
If  I  know  gusto  in  painting  when  I  see  it, 
this  canvas  was  painted  with  rare  enjoyment. 
The  tart,  rosy,  humorous  look  of  the  man, 
his  nose  like  a  cudgel,  his  face  resting  squarely 
on  the  jowl,  has  been  caught  and  perpetuated 
with  something  that  looks  like  brotherly  love. 
A  peculiarly   subtle   expression   haunts   the 


Some  Portraits  by  Raeburn      213 

lower  part,  sensual  and  incredulous,  like  that 
of  a  man  tasting  good  Bordeaux  with  half  a 
fancy  it  has  been  somewhat  too  long  uncorked. 
From  under  the  pendulous  eyelids  of  old  age, 
the  eyes  look  out  with  a  half-youthful,  half- 
frosty  twinkle.  Hands,  with  no  pretence  to 
distinction,  are  folded  on  the  judge's  stomach. 
So  sympathetically  is  the  character  conceived 
by  the  portrait  painter,  that  it  is  hardly  pos- 
sible to  avoid  some  movement  of  sympathy 
on  the  part  of  the  spectator.  And  sympathy 
is  a  thing  to  be  encouraged,  apart  from 
humane  considerations,  because  it  supplies 
us  with  the  materials  for  wisdom.  It  is  prob- 
ably more  instructive  to  entertain  a  sneaking 
kindness  for  any  unpopular  person,  and, 
among  the  rest,  for  Lord  Braxfield,  than  to 
give  way  to  perfect  raptures  of  moral  indig- 
nation against  his  abstract  vices.  He  was 
the  last  judge  on  the  Scotch  bench  to  employ 
the  pure  Scotch  idiom.  His  opinions,  thus 
given  in  Doric,  and  conceived  in  a  lively, 
rugged,  conversational  style,  were  full  of 
point  and  authority.      Out  of  the  bar,  or  off 


214      So7ne  Portraits  by  Raeburn 

the  bench,  he  was  a  convivial  man,  a  lover  o/ 
wine,  and  one  who  "  shone  peculiarly "  at 
tavern  meetings.  He  has  left  behind  him 
an  unrivalled  reputation  for  rough  and  cruel 
speech  ;  and  to  this  day  his  name  smacks  of 
the  gallows.  It  was  he  who  presided  at  the 
trials  of  Muir  and  Skirving  in  1793  and 
1 794  ;  and  his  appearance  on  these  occa- 
sions was  scarcely  cut  to  the  pattern  of 
to-day.  His  summing  up  on  Muir  began 
thus  —  the  reader  must  supply  for  himself 
"the  growling,  blacksmith's  voice"  and  the 
broad  Scotch  accent :  "  Now  this  is  the  ques- 
tion for  consideration — Is  the  panel  guilty  of 
sedition,  or  is  he  not  ?  Now,  before  this  can 
be  answered,  two  things  must  be  attended  to 
that  require  no  proof :  First,  that  the  British 
constitution  is  the  best  that  ever  was  since 
the  creation  of  the  world,  and  it  is  not  possible 
to  make  it  better."  It's  a  pretty  fair  start, 
is  it  not,  for  a  political  trial?  A  little  later, 
he  has  occasion  to  refer  to  the  relation?  of 
Muir  with  "  those  wretches,"  the  French.  "  1 
never  liked  the  French  all  my  days,"  said  his 


Some  Portraits  by  Raeburn      2 1 5 

lordship,  "but  now  I  hate  them."  And  yet 
a  little  further  on:  "A  government  in  any 
country  should  be  like  a  corporation  ;  and 
in  this  country  it  is  made  up  of  the  landed 
interest,  which  alone  has  a  right  to  be  repre- 
sented. As  for  the  rabble  who  have  nothing 
but  personal  property,  what  hold  has  the 
nation  of  them  ?  They  may  pack  up  their 
property  on  their  backs,  and  leave  the  country 
in  the  twinkling  of  an  eye."  After  having 
made  profession  of  sentiments  so  cynically 
anti-popular  as  these,  when  the  trials  were  at 
an  end,  which  was  generally  about  midnight, 
Braxfield  would  walk  home  to  his  house  in 
George  Square  with  no  better  escort  than  an 
easy  conscience.  I  think  I  see  him  getting 
his  cloak  about  his  shoulders,  and,  with  per- 
haps a  lantern  in  one  hand,  steering  his  way 
along  the  streets  in  the  mirk  January  night 
It  might  have  been  that  very  day  that  Skirv- 
ing  had  defied  him  in  these  words  :  "  It  is 
altogether  unavailing  for  your  loidship  to 
menace  me  ;  for  I  have  long  learned  to  fear 
not  the  face  of  man  ;"  and  I  can  fancy,  as 


2!6      Some  Portraits  by  Raeburn 

Braxfield  reflected  on  the  number  of  what  he 
called  Grumbletonians  in  Edinburgh,  and  oi 
how  many  of  them  must  bear  special  malice 
against  so  upright  and  inflexible  a  judge, 
nay,  and  might  at  that  very  moment  be 
lurking  in  the  mouth  of  a  dark  close  with 
hostile  intent — I  can  fancy  that  he  indulged 
in  a  sour  smile,  as  he  reflected  that  he  also 
was  not  especially  afraid  of  men's  faces  or 
men's  fists,  and  had  hitherto  found  no  occa- 
sion to  embody  this  insensibility  in  heroic 
words.  For  if  he  was  an  inhumane  old 
gentleman  (and  I  am  afraid  it  is  a  fact  that 
he  was  inhumane),  he  was  also  perfectly 
intrepid.  You  may  look  into  the  queer  face 
of  that  portrait  for  as  long  as  you  will,  but 
you  will  not  see  any  hole  or  corner  for 
timidity  to  enter  in. 

Indeed,  there  would  be  no  end  to  this 
paper  if  I  were  even  to  name  half  of  the 
portraits  that  were  remarkable  for  their  exe- 
cution, or  interesting  by  association.  There 
was  one  picture  of  Mr.  Wardrop,  of  Torbane 
Hill,  which  you  might  palm  off  upon  most 


Some  Portraits  by  Raeburn      217 

laymen  as  a  Rembrandt ;  and  close  by,  you 
saw  the  white  head  of  John  Clerk,  of  Eldin, 
that  country  gentleman  who,  playing  with 
pieces  of  cork  on  his  own  dining-table,  in- 
vented modern  naval  warfare.  There  was 
that  portrait  of  Neil  Gow,  to  sit  for  which 
the  old  fiddler  walked  daily  through  the 
streets  of  Edinburgh  arm  in  arm  with  the 
Duke  of  Athole.  There  was  good  Harry 
Erskine,  with  his  satirical  nose  and  upper  lip, 
and  his  mouth  just  open  for  a  witticism  to 
pop  out ;  Hutton  the  geologist,  in  quakerish 
raiment,  and  looking  altogether  trim  and 
narrow,  and  as  if  he  cared  more  about  fossils 
than  young  ladies  ;  full-blown  John  Robieson, 
in  hyperbolical  red  dressing-gown,  and,  every 
inch  of  him,  a  fine  old  man  of  the  world  ; 
Constable  the  publisher,  upright  beside  a 
table,  and  bearing  a  corporation  with  com- 
mercial dignity  ;  Lord  Bannatyne  hearing  a 
ciuse,  if  ever  anybody  heard  a  cause  since 
the  world  began ;  Lord  Newton  just  awakened 
from  clandestine  slumber  on  the  bench  ;  and 
the    second    President    Dundas,   with   every 


21 8      Some  Portraits  by  Raebiirn 

feature  so  fat  that  he  reminds  you,  in  his 
wig,  of  some  droll  old  court  officer  in  an 
illustrated  nursery  story-book,  and  yet  all 
these  fat  features  instinct  with  meaning,  the 
fat  lips  curved  and  compressed,  the  nose 
combining  somehow  the  dignity  of  a  beak 
with  the  good  nature  of  a  bottle,  and  the 
very  double  chin  with  an  air  of  intelligence 
and  insight.  And  all  these  portraits  are  so 
pat  and  telling,  and  look  at  you  so  spiritedly 
from  the  walls,  that,  compared  with  the  sort 
of  living  people  one  sees  about  the  streets, 
they  are  as  bright  new  sovereigns  to  fishy 
and  obliterated  sixpences.  Some  disparaging 
thoughts  upon  our  own  generation  could 
hardly  fail  to  present  themselves  ;  but  it  is 
perhaps  only  the  sacer  vates  who  is  wanting  ; 
and  we  also,  painted  by  such  a  man  as 
Carolus  Duran,  may  look  in  holiday  immor- 
tality upon  our  children  and  grandchildren. 

Raeburn's  young  women,  to  be  frank,  Rre 
by  no  means  of  the  same  order  of  merit.  No 
one,  of  course,  could  be  insensible  to  the 
presence  of  Miss  Janet  Suttie  or  Mrs.  Camp- 


Some  Portraits  by  Raeburn      219 

bell  of  Fossil.  When  things  are  as  pretty  as 
that,  criticism  is  out  of  season.  But,  on  the 
whole,  it  is  only  with  women  of  a  certain  age 
that  he  can  be  said  to  have  succeeded,  in  at 
all  the  same  sense  as  we  say  he  succeeded 
with  men.  The  younger  women  do  not  seem 
to  be  made  of  good  flesh  and  blood.  They 
are  not  painted  in  rich  and  unctuous  touches. 
They  are  dry  and  diaphanous.  And  although 
young  ladies  in  Great  Britain  are  all  that  can 
be  desired  of  them,  I  would  fain  hope  they 
are  not  quite  so  much  of  that  as  Raeburn 
would  have  us  believe.  In  all  these  pretty 
faces,  you  miss  character,  you  miss  fire,  you 
miss  that  spice  of  the  devil  which  is  worth 
all  the  prettiness  in  the  world  ;  and  what  is 
worst  of  all,  you  miss  sex.  His  young  ladies 
are  not  womanly  to  nearly  the  same  degree 
as  his  men  are  masculine  ;  they  are  so  in  a 
negative  sense  ;  in  short,  they  are  the  typical 
young  ladies  of  the  male  novelist 

To  say  truth,  either  Raeburn  was  timid 
with  young  and  pretty  sitters  ;  or  he  had 
stupefied    himself   with   sentimentalities  ;   or 


220      Some  Portraits  by  Raeburn 

else  (and  here  is  about  the  truth  of  it) 
Raeburn  and  the  rest  of  us  labour  under  an 
obstinate  blindness  in  one  direction,  and 
know  very  little  more  about  women  after 
all  these  centuries  than  Adam  when  he  first 
saw  Eve.  This  is  all  the  more  likely,  because 
we  are  by  no  means  so  unintelligent  in  the 
matter  of  old  women.  There  are  some 
capital  old  women,  it  seems  to  me,  in  books 
written  by  men.  And  Raeburn  has  some, 
such  as  Mrs.  Colin  Campbell,  of  Park,  or 
the  anonymous  "  Old  lady  with  a  large  cap," 
which  are  done  in  the  same  frank,  perspica- 
cious spirit  as  the  very  best  of  his  men.  He 
could  look  into  their  eyes  without  trouble  ; 
and  he  was  not  withheld,  by  any  bashful 
sentimentalism,  from  recognising  what  he 
saw  there  and  unsparingly  putting  it  down 
upon  the  canvas.  But  where  people  cannot 
meet  without  some  confusion  and  a  good 
deal  of  involuntary  humbug,  and  are  occupied, 
for  as  long  as  they  are  together,  with  a  very 
different  vein  of  thought,  there  cannot  be 
much   room   for  intelligent  study  nor  much 


Some  Portraits  by  Raeburn      221 

result  in  the  shape  of  genuine  comprehension, 
Even  women,  who  understand  men  so  well 
for  practical  purposes,  do  not  know  them 
well  enough  for  the  purposes  of  art.  Take 
even  the  very  best  of  their  male  creations, 
take  Tito  Melema,  for  instance,  and  you  will 
find  he  has  an  equivocal  air,  and  every  now 
and  again  remembers  he  has  a  comb  at  the 
back  of  his  head.  Of  course,  no  woman  will 
believe  this,  and  many  men  will  be  so  very 
polite  as  to  humour  their  incredulity. 


CHILD'S  PLAY 

'T'HE  regret  we  have  for  our  childhood  is 
not  wholly  justifiable  :  so  much  a  man 
may  lay  down  without  fear  of  public  ribaldry  ; 
for  although  we  shake  our  heads  over  the 
change,  we  are  not  unconscious  of  the  mani- 
fold advantages  of  our  new  state.  What  we 
lose  in  generous  impulse,  we  more  than  gain 
in  the  habit  of  generously  watching  others  ; 
and  the  capacity  to  enjoy  Shakespeare  may 
balance  a  lost  aptitude  for  playing  at  soldiers. 
Terror  is  gone  out  of  our  lives,  moreover ; 
we  no  longer  see  the  devil  in  the  bed-curtains 
nor  lie  awake  to  listen  to  the  wind.  We 
go  to  school  no  more  ;  and  if  we  have  only 
exchanged  one  drudgery  for  another  (which 
is  by  no  means  sure),  we  are  set  free  for 
ever  from   the    daily   fear  of  chastisement 


Child's  Play  223 

And  yet  a  great  change  has  overtaken  us  ; 
and  although  we  do  not  enjoy  ourselves  less, 
at  least  we  take  our  pleasure  differently. 
We  need  pickles  nowadays  to  make  Wednes- 
day's cold  mutton  please  our  Friday's  appetite; 
and  I  can  remember  the  time  when  to  call  it 
red  venison,  and  tell  myself  a  hunter's  story 
would  have  made  it  more  palatable  than  the 
best  of  sauces.  To  the  grown  person,  cold 
mutton  is  cold  mutton  all  the  world  over ;  not 
all  the  mythology  ever  invented  by  man  will 
make  it  better  or  worse  to  him  ;  the  broad 
fact,  the  clamant  reality,  of  the  mutton  carries 
away  before  it  such  seductive  figments.  But 
for  the  child  it  is  still  possible  to  weave  an 
enchantment  over  eatables  ;  and  if  he  has  but 
read  of  a  dish  in  a  story-book,  it  will  be 
heavenly  manna  to  him  for  a  week. 

If  a  grown  man  does  not  like  eating  and 
drinking  and  exercise,  if  he  is  not  something 
positive  in  his  tastes,  it  means  he  has  a 
feeble  body  and  should  have  some  medicine  ; 
but  children  may  be  pure  spirits,  if  they  will, 
and  take  their  enjoyment  in  a  world  of  moon- 


224  Child's  Play 

shine.  Sensation  does  not  count  for  so  much 
in  our  first  years  as  afterwards  ;  something 
of  the  swaddling  numbness  of  infancy  clings 
about  us  ;  we  see  and  touch  and  hear  through 
a  sort  of  golden  mist.  Children,  for  instance, 
are  able  enough  to  see,  but  they  have  no 
great  faculty  for  looking ;  they  do  not  use 
their  eyes  for  the  pleasure  of  using  them, 
but  for  by-ends  of  their  own  ;  and  the  things 
I  call  to  mind  seeing  most  vividly,  were  not 
beautiful  in  themselves,  but  merely  interest- 
ing or  enviable  to  me  as  I  thought  they 
might  be  turned  to  practical  account  in  play. 
Nor  is  the  sense  of  touch  so  clean  and 
poignant  in  children  as  it  is  in  a  man.  If 
you  will  turn  over  your  old  memories,  I  think 
the  sensations  of  this  sort  you  remember 
will  be  somewhat  vague,  and  come  to  not 
much  more  than  a  blunt,  general  sense  of  heat 
on  summer  days,  or  a  blunt,  general  sense  of 
wellbeing  in  bed.  And  here,  of  course,  you 
will  understand  pleasurable  sensations ;  for 
overmastering  pain — the  most  deadly  and 
tragical  element  in   life,  and   the  true  com- 


Child's  Play  225 

mander  of  man's  soul  and  body — alas !  pain 
has  its  own  way  with  all  of  us  ;  it  breaks  in, 
a  rude  visitant,  upon  the  fairy  garden  where 
the  child  wanders  in  a  dream,  no  less  surely 
than  it  rules  upon  the  field  of  battle,  or 
sends  the  immortal  war-god  whimpering  to 
his  father ;  and  innocence,  no  more  than 
philosophy,  can  protect  us  from  this  sting. 
As  for  taste,  when  we  bear  in  mind  the 
excesses  of  unmitigated  sugar  which  delight 
a  youthful  palate,  "  it  is  surely  no  very 
cynical  asperity "  to  think  taSte  a  character 
of  the  maturer  growth.  Smell  and  hearing 
are  perhaps  more  developed  ;  I  remember 
many  scents,  many  voices,  and  a  great  deal 
of  spring  singing  in  the  woods.  But  hearing 
is  capable  of  vast  improvement  as  a  means 
of  pleasure  ;  and  there  is  all  the  world 
between  gaping  wonderment  at  the  jargon 
sf  birds,  and  the  emotion  with  which  a  man 
listens  to  articulate  music. 

At  the  same  time,  and  step  by  step  with 
this  increase  in  the  definition  and  intensity 
of  what  we  feel  which  accompanies  our  grow- 

Q 


2  26  Child  s  Play 

ing  age,  another  change  takes  place  in  the 
sphere  of  intellect,  by  which  all  things  are 
transformed  and  seen  through  theories  and 
associations  as  through  coloured  windows. 
We  make  to  ourselves  day  by  day,  out  of 
history,  and  gossip,  and  economical  specula- 
tions, and  God  knows  what,  a  medium  in 
which  we  walk  and  through  which  we  look 
abroad.  We  study  shop  windows  with  other 
eyes  than  in  our  childhood,  never  to  wonder, 
not  always  to  admire,  but  to  make  and 
modify  our  little  incongruous  theories  about 
life.  It  is  no  longer  the  uniform  of  a  soldier 
that  arrests  our  attention  ;  but  perhaps  the 
flowing  carriage  of  a  woman,  or  perhaps  a 
countenance  that  has  been  vividly  stamped 
with  passion  and  carries  an  adventurous 
story  written  in  its  lines.  The  pleasure  of 
surprise  is  passed  away  ;  sugar -loaves  and 
water-carts  seem  mighty  tame  to  encounter  ; 
and  we  walk  the  streets  to  make  romances 
and  to  sociologise.  Nor  must  we  deny  that 
a  good  many  of  us  walk  them  solely  for  the 
purposes  of  transit  or   in   the  interest  of  a 


Child's  Play  227 

livelier  digestion.  These,  indeed,  may  look 
back  with  mingled  thoughts  upon  their  child- 
hood, but  the  rest  are  in  a  better  case  ;  they 
know  more  than  when  they  were  children, 
they  understand  better,  their  desires  and 
sympathies  answer  more  nimbly  to  the  pro- 
vocation of  the  senses,  and  their  minds  are 
brimming  with  interest  as  they  go  about  the 
world. 

According  to  my  contention,  this  is  a 
flight  to  which  children  cannot  rise.  They 
are  wheeled  in  perambulators  or  dragged 
about  by  nurses  in  a  pleasing  stupor.  A 
vague,  faint,  abiding  wonderment  possesses 
them.  Here  and  there  some  specially 
remarkable  circumstance,  such  as  a  water- 
cart  or  a  guardsman,  fairly  penetrates  into 
the  seat  of  thought  and  calls  them,  for  half 
a  moment,  out  of  themselves  ;  and  you  may 
see  them,  still  towed  forward  sideways  by 
the  inexorable  nurse  as  by  a  sort  of  destiny, 
but  still  staring  at  the  bright  object  in  their 
wake.  It  may  be  some  minutes  before 
another    such    moving    spectacle    reawakens 


V     228  Child's  Play 

them  to  the  world  in  which  they  dwell.  Foi 
other  children,  they  almost  invariably  show 
some  intelligent  sympathy.  "  Ther-  is  a 
fine  fellow  making  mud  pies,"  they  seem  to 
say ;  "  that  I  can  understand,  there  is  some 
sense  in  mud  pies."  But  the  doings  of  their 
elders,  unless  where  they  are  speakingly 
picturesque  or  recommend  themselves  by  the 
quality  of  being  easily  imitable,  they  let 
them  go  over  their  heads  (as  we  say)  without 
the  least  regard.  If  it  were  not  for  this 
perpetual  imitation,  we  should  be  tempted 
to  fancy  they  despised  us  outright,  or  only 
considered  us  in  the  light  of  creatures  brutally 
strong  and  brutally  silly  ;  among  whom  they 
condescended  to  dwell  in  obedience  like  a 
philosopher  at  a  barbarous  court.  At  times, 
indeed,  they  display  an  arrogance  of  dis- 
regard that  is  truly  staggering.  Once,  when 
I  was  groaning  aloud  with  physical  pain,  a 
young  gentleman  came  into  the  room  and 
nonchalantly  inquired  if  I  had  seen  his  bow 
and  arrow.  He  made  no  account  of  my 
groans,    which   he    accepted,    as   he    had    to 


Child's  Play  229 

accept  so  much  else,  as  a  piece  of  the  in- 
explicable conduct  of  his  elders  ;  and  like  a 
wise  young  gentleman,  he  would  waste  no 
wonder  on  the  subject.  Those  elders,  who 
care  so  little  for  rational  enjoyment,  and  are 
even  the  enemies  of  rational  enjoyment  for 
others,  he  had  accepted  without  understanding 
and  without  complaint,  as  the  rest  of  us 
accept  the  scheme  of  the  universe. 

We  grown  people  can  tell  ourselves  a 
story,  give  and  take  strokes  until  the  bucklers 
ring,  ride  far  and  fast,  marry,  fall,  and  die  ; 
all  the  while  sitting  quietly  by  the  fire  or 
lying  prone  in  bed.  This  is  exactly  what  a 
child  cannot  do,  or  does  not  do,  at  least, 
when  he  can  find  anything  else.  He  works 
all  with  lay  figures  and  stage  properties. 
When  his  story  comes  to  the  fighting,  he 
must  rise,  get  something  by  way  of  a  sword 
and  have  a  set-to  with  a  piece  of  furniture, 
until  he  is  out  of  breath.  When  he  comes 
to  ride  with  the  king's  pardon,  he  must 
bestride  a  chair,  which  he  will  so  hurry  and 
belabour  and  on  which  he  will  so  furiously 


2  30  Child's  Play 

demean  himself,  that  the  messenger  will 
arrive,  if  not  bloody  with  spurring,  at  least 
fiery  red  with  haste.  If  his  romance  involves 
an  accident  upon  a  cliff,  he  must  clamber  in 
person  about  the  chest  of  drawers  and  fall 
bodily  upon  the  carpet,  before  his  imagination 
is  satisfied.  Lead  soldiers,  dolls,  all  toys,  in 
short,  are  in  the  same  category  and  answer 
the  same  end.  Nothing  can  stagger  a  child's 
faith ;  he  accepts  the  clumsiest  substitutes 
and  can  swallow  the  most  staring  incon- 
gruities. The  chair  he  has  just  been  besieging 
as  a  castle,  or  valiantly  cutting  to  the  ground 
as  a  dragon,  is  taken  away  for  the  accommoda- 
tion of  a  morning  visitor,  and  he  is  nothing 
abashed  ;  he  can  skirmish  by  the  hour  with 
a  stationary  coal-scuttle  ;  in  the  midst  of  the 
enchanted  pleasance,  he  can  see,  without 
sensible  shock,  the  gardener  soberly  digging 
potatoes  for  the  day's  dinner.  He  can  make 
abstraction  of  whatever  does  not  fit  into  his 
fable  ;  and  he  puts  his  eyes  into  his  pocket, 
just  as  we  hold  our  noses  in  an  unsavoury 
lane.     And  so  it  is,  that  although  thewayi 


Child's  Play  33 1 


of  children  cross  with  those  of  their  elders 


m 


a  hundred  places  daily,  they  never  go  in  the 
same  direction  nor  .sg^much  as  lie  in  the 
same  element  So  may  the  telegraph  wires 
intersect  the  line  of  the  high-road,  or  so 
might  a  landscape  painter  and  a  bagman 
visit  the  same  country,  and  yet  move  in 
different  worlds. 

People  struck  with  these  spectacles,  cry 
aloud  about  the  power  of  imagination  in  the 
young.  Indeed  there  may  be  two  words  to 
that.  It  is,  in  some  ways,  but  a  pedestrian 
fancy  that  the  child  exhibits.  It  is  the 
grown  people  who  make  the  nursery  stories  ; 
all  the  children  do,  is  jealously  to  preserve 
the  text.  One  out  of  a  dozen  reasons  why 
Robinson  Crusoe  should  be  so  popular  with 
youth,  is  that  it  hits  their  level  in  this  matter 
to  a  nicety  ;  Crusoe  was  always  at  makeshifts 
and  had,  in  so  many  words,  to  play  at  a  great 
variety  of  professions  ;  and  then  the  book  is 
all  about  tools,  and  there  is  nothing  that 
delights  a  child  so  much.  Hammers  and 
saws  belong  to  a  province  of  life  that  positively 


2  32  Child's  Play 

calls  for  imitation.  The  juvenile  lyrical 
drama,  surely  of  the  most  ancient  Thespian 
model,  wherein  the  trades  of  mankind  are 
successively  simulated  to  the  running  burthen 
'  On  a  cold  and  frosty  morning,"  gives  a 
good  instance  of  the  artistic  taste  in  children. 
And  this  need  for  overt  action  and  lay  figures 
testifies  to  a  defect  in  the  child's  imagination 
which  prevents  him  from  carrying  out  his 
novels  in  the  privacy  of  his  own  heart  He 
does  not  yet  know  enough  of  the  world  and 
men.  His  experience  is  incomplete.  That 
stage-wardrobe  and  scene-room  that  we  call 
the  memory  is  so  ill  provided,  that  he  can 
overtake  few  combinations  and  body  out  few 
stories,  to  his  own  content,  without  some 
external  aid.  He  is  at  the  experimental 
stage  ;  he  is  not  sure  how  one  would  feel  in 
certain  circumstances  ;  to  make  sure,  he  must 
come  as  near  trying  it  as  his  means  permit 
And  so  here  is  young  heroism  with  a  wooden 
sword,  and  mothers  practice  their  kind  voca- 
tion over  a  bit  of  jointed  stick.  It  may  be 
laughable  enough  just  now ;  but  it  is  these 


Child's  Play  233 

same  people  and  these  same  thoughts,  that 
not  long  hence,  when  they  are  on  the  theatre 
of  life,  will  make  you  weep  and  tremble. 
For  children  think  very  much  the  same 
thoughts  and  dream  the  same  dreams,  as 
bearded  men  and  marriageable  women.  No 
one  is  more  romantic.  Fame  and  honour, 
the  love  of  young  men  and  the  love  of 
mothers,  the  business  man's  pleasure  in 
method,  all  these  and  others  they  anticipate 
and  rehearse  in  their  play  hours.  Upon  us, 
who  are  further  advanced  and  fairly  dealing 
with  the  threads  of  destiny,  they  only  glance 
from  time  to  time  to  glean  a  hint  for  their 
own  mimetic  reproduction.  Two  children 
playing  at  soldiers  are  far  more  interesting 
to  each  other  than  one  of  the  scarlet  beings 
whom  both  are  busy  imitating.  This  is 
perhaps  the  greatest  oddity  of  all.  "  Art  for 
art  "  is  their  motto  ;  and  the  doings  of  grown 
folk  are  only  interesting  as  the  raw  material 
for  play.  Not  Theophile  Gautier,  not  Flau- 
bert, can  look  more  callously  upon  life,  or 
rate  the  reproduction  more  highly  over  the 


234  Child's  Play 

reality  ;  and  they  will  parody  an  execution 
a  deathbed,  or  the  funeral  of  the  young  man 
of  Nain,  with  all  the  cheerfulness  in  th2 
world. 

The  true  parallel  for  play  is  not  to  be 
found,  of  course,  in  conscious  art,  which, 
though  it  be  derived  from  play,  is  itself  an 
abstract,  impersonal  thing,  and  depends 
largely  upon  philosophical  interests  beyond 
the  scope  of  childhood.  It  is  when  we  make 
castles  in  the  air  and  personate  the  leading 
character  in  our  own  romances,  that  we 
return  to  the  spirit  of  our  first  years.  Only, 
there  are  several  reasons  why  the  spirit  is  no 
longer  so  agreeable  to  indulge.  Nowadays, 
when  we  admit  this  personal  element  into 
our  divagations  we  are  apt  to  stir  up  uncom- 
fortable and  sorrowful  memories,  and  remind 
ourselves  sharply  of  old  wounds.  Our  day- 
dreams can  no  longer  lie  all  in  the  air  like  a 
story  in  the  Arabian  Nights ;  they  read  to 
us  rather  like  the  history  of  a  period  in  which 
we  ourselves  had  taken  part,  whore  we  come 
across  many  unfortunate  passages  and  find  ont 


Child's  Play  235 

own  conduct  smartly  reprimanded.  And  then 
the  child,  mind  you,  acts  his  parts.  He  does 
not  merely  repeat  them  to  himself;  he  leaps, 
he  runs,  and  sets  the  blood  agog  over  all  his 
body.  And  so  his  play  breathes  him  ;  and 
he  no  sooner  assumes  a  passion  than  he  gives 
it  vent.  Alas !  when  we  betake  ourselves 
to  our  intellectual  form  of  play,  sitting  quietly 
by  the  fire  or  lying  prone  in  bed,  we  rouse 
many  hot  feelings  for  which  we  can  find  no 
outlet  Substitutes  are  not  acceptable  to 
the  mature  mind,  which  desires  the  thing 
itself;  and  even  to  rehearse  a  triumphant 
dialogue  with  one's  enemy,  although  it  is 
perhaps  the  most  satisfactory  piece  ot  play 
still  left  within  our  reach,  is  not  entirely 
satisfying,  and  is  even  apt  to  lead  to  a  visit 
and  an  interview  which  may  be  the  reverse 
of  triumphant  after  all. 

In  the  child's  world  of  dim  sensation,  play 
is  all  in  all.  "  Making  believe  "  is  the  gist 
of  his  whole  life,  and  he  cannot  so  much  as 
take  a  walk  except  in  character.  I  could 
not  learn  my  alphabet  without  some  suitable 


236  Child's  Play 

mise-en-sckne,  and  had  to  act  a  business  man 
in  an  office  before  I  could  sit  down  to  my 
book.  Will  you  kindly  question  your  memory; 
and  find  out  how  much  you  did,  work  or 
pleasure,  in  good  faith  and  soberness,  and  for 
how  much  you  had  to  cheat  yourself  with 
some  invention  ?  I  remember,  as  though  it 
were  yesterday,  the  expansion  of  spirit,  the 
dignity  and  self-reliance,  that  came  with  a 
pair  of  mustachios  in  burnt  cork,  even  when 
there  was  none  to  see.  Children  are  even 
content  to  forego  what  we  call  the  realities, 
and  prefer  the  shadow  to  the  substance. 
When  they  might  be  speaking  intelligibly 
together,  they  chatter  senseless  gibberish  by 
the  hour,  and  are  quite  happy  because  they 
are  making  believe  to  speak  French.  I  have 
said  already  how  even  the  imperious  appetite 
of  hunger  suffers  itself  to  be  gulled  and  led 
by  the  nose  with  the  fag  end  of  an  old  song. 
And  it  goes  deeper  than  this  :  when  children 
are  together  even  a  meal  is  felt  as  an  inter- 
ruption in  the  business  of  life  ;  and  they 
must   find    some   imaginative   sanction,  and 


Child's  Play  237 

lell  themselves  some  sort  of  story,  to  account 
for,  to  colour,  to  render  entertaining,  the 
simple  processes  of  eating  and  drinking. 
What  wonderful  fancies  I  have  heard  evolved 
out  of  the  pattern  upon  tea -cups! — from 
which  there  followed  a  code  of  rules  and  a 
whole  world  of  excitement,  until  tea-drinking 
began  to  take  rank  as  a  game.  When  my 
cousin  and  I  took  our  porridge  of  a  morning, 
we  had  a  device  to  enliven  the  course  of  the 
meal.  He  ate  his  with  sugar,  and  explained 
it  to  be  a  country  continually  buried  under 
snow.  I  took  mine  with  milk,  and  explained 
it  to  be  a  country  suffering  gradual  inunda- 
tion. You  can  imagine  us  exchanging 
bulletins  ;  how  here  was  an  island  still 
unsubmerged,  here  a  valley  not  yet  covered 
with  snow ;  what  inventions  were  made ; 
how  his  population  lived  in  cabins  on  perches 
and  travelled  on  stilts,  and  how  mine  was 
always  in  boats ;  how  the  interest  grew 
furious,  as  the  last  corner  of  safe  ground  was 
cut  off  on  all  sides  and  grew  smaller  every 
moment ;  and  how,  in  fine,  the  food  was  of 


2  33  Child's  Play 

altogether  secondary  importance,  and  might 
even  have  been  nauseous,  so  long  as  we 
seasoned  it  with  these  dreams.  But  perhaps 
the  most  exciting  moments  I  ever  had  over 
a  meal,  were  in  the  case  of  calves'  feet  jelly. 
It  was  hardly  possible  not  to  believe — and 
you  may  be  sure,  so  far  from  trying,  I  did 
all  I  could  to  favour  the  illusion — that  some 
part  of  it  was  hollow,  and  that  sooner  or 
later  my  spoon  would  lay  open  the  secret 
tabernacle  of  the  golden  rock.  There,  might 
some  miniature  Red  Beard  await  his  hour  ; 
there,  might  one  find  the  treasures  of  the 
Forty  Thieves,  and  bewildered  Cassim  beat- 
ing about  the  walls.  And  so  I  quarried  on 
slowly,  with  bated  breath,  savouring  the 
interest.  Believe  me,  I  had  little  palate  left 
for  the  jelly  ;  and  though  I  preferred  the 
taste  when  I  took  cream  with  it,  I  used  often 
to  go  without,  because  the  cream  dimmed 
the  transparent  fractures. 

Even  with  games,  this  spirit  is  authori- 
tative with  right-minded  children.  It  is  thu3 
that    hide-and-seek    has   so   pre-eminent  a 


ChilcTs  Play  239 

sovereignty,  for  it  is  the  wellspring  of 
romance,  and  the  actions  and  the  excitement 
to  which  it  gives  rise  lend  themselves  to 
almost  any  sort  of  fable.  And  thus  cricket, 
v/hich  is  a  mere  matter  of  dexterity,  palpably 
about  nothing  and  for  no  end,  often  fails  to 
satisfy  infantile  craving.  It  is  a  game,  if 
you  like,  but  not  a  game  of  play.  You 
cannot  tell  yourself  a  story  about  cricket ; 
and  the  activity  it  calls  forth  can  be  justi- 
fied on  no  rational  theory.  Even  football, 
although  it  admirably  simulates  the  tug  and 
the  ebb  and  flow  of  battle,  has  presented 
difficulties  to  the  mind  of  young  sticklers 
after  verisimilitude  ;  and  I  knew  at  least  one 
little  boy  who  was  mightily  exercised  about 
the  presence  of  the  ball,  and  had  to  spirit 
himself  up,  whenever  he  came  to  play,  with 
an  elaborate  story  of  enchantment,  and  take 
the  missile  as  a  sort  of  talisman  bandied 
about  in  conflict  between  two  Arabian 
nations. 

To  think  of  such  a  frame  of  mind,  is  to 
become  disquieted  about  the  bringing  up  of 


240  Child's  Play 

children.  Surely  they  dwell  in  a  mytho 
logical  epoch,  and  are  not  the  contemporariea 
of  their  parents.  What  can  they  think  o! 
them  ?  what  can  they  make  of  these  bearded 
or  petticoated  giants  who  look  down  upon 
their  games  ?  who  move  upon  a  cloudy 
Olympus,  following  unknown  designs  apart 
from  rational  enjoyment  ?  who  profess  the 
tenderest  solicitude  for  children,  and  yet 
every  now  and  again  reach  down  out  of  their 
altitude  and  terribly  vindicate  the  preroga- 
tives of  age  ?  Off  goes  the  child,  corporally 
smarting,  but  morally  rebellious.  Were  there 
ever  such  unthinkable  deities  as  parents  ?  I 
would  give  a  great  deal  to  know  what,  in 
nine  cases  out  of  ten,  is  the  child's  unvar- 
nished feeling.  A  sense  of  past  cajolery  ;  a 
sense  of  personal  attraction,  at  best  very 
feeble  ;  above  all,  I  should  imagine,  a  sense 
of  terror  for  the  untried  residue  of  mankind  : 
go  to  make  up  the  attraction  that  he  feels. 
No  wonder,  poor  little  heart,  with  such  a 
weltering  world  in  front  of  him,  if  he  clings 
to  the  hand  he  knows  1     The  dread  irration* 


Child's  Play  241 

ality  of  the  whole  affair,  as  it  seems  to 
children,  is  a  thing  we  are  all  too  ready  to 
forget.  "  O,  why,"  I  remember  passionately 
wondering,  "  why  can  we  not  all  be  happy 
and  devote  ourselves  to  play  ?"  And  when 
children  do  philosophise,  I  believe  it  is 
usually  to  very  much  the  same  purpose. 

One  thing,  at  least,  comes  very  clearly  out 
of  these  considerations ;  that  whatever  we 
are  to  expect  at  the  hands  of  children,  it 
should  not  be  any  peddling  exactitude  about 
matters  of  fact.  They  walk  in  a  vain  show, 
and  among  mists  and  rainbows  ;  they  are 
passionate  after  dreams  and  unconcerned 
about  realities  ;  speech  is  a  difficult  art  not 
wholly  learned  ;  and  there  is  nothing  in  their 
own  tastes  or  purposes  to  teach  them  what 
we  mean  by  abstract  truthfulness.  When  a 
bad  writer  is  inexact,  even  if  he  can  look 
back  on  half  a  century  of  years,  we  charge 
him  with  incompetence  and  not  with  dis- 
honesty. And  why  not  extend  the  same 
allowance  to  imperfect  speakers  ?  Let  a 
stockbroker  be  dead  stupid  about  poetry,  or 


242  Child's  Play 

a  poet  inexact  in  the  details  of  business,  and 
we  excuse  them  heartily  from  blame.  But 
show  us  a  miserable,  unbreeched,  human 
entity,  whose  whole  profession  it  is  to  take  a 
tub  for  a  fortified  town  and  a  shaving-brush 
for  the  deadly  stiletto,  and  who  passes  three- 
fourths  of  his  time  in  a  dream  and  the  rest 
in  open  self-deception,  and  we  expect  him 
to  be  as  nice  upon  a  matter  of  fact  as  a 
scientific  expert  bearing  evidence.  Upon 
my  heart,  I  think  it  less  than  decent.  You 
do  not  consider  how  little  the  child  sees,  or 
how  swift  he  is  to  weave  what  he  has  seen 
into  bewildering  fiction  ;  and  that  he  cares 
no  more  for  what  you  call  truth,  than  you 
for  a  gingerbread  dragoon, 

I  am  reminded,  as  I  write,  that  the  child 
is  very  inquiring  as  to  the  precise  truth  of 
stories.  But  indeed  this  is  a  very  different 
matter,  and  one  bound  up  with  the  subject  of 
play,  and  the  precise  amount  of  playfulness, 
or  playability,  to  be  looked  for  in  the  world. 
Many  such  burning  questions  must  arise  in 
the   course   of  nursery  education.      Among 


Child! s  Play  243 

the  fauna  of  this  planet,  which  already 
embraces  the  pretty  soldier  and  the  terrifying 
Irish  beggarman,  is,  or  is  not,  the  child  to 
expect  a  Bluebeard  or  a  Cormoran  ?  Is  he, 
or  is  he  not,  to  look  out  for  magicians, 
kindly  and  potent  ?  May  he,  or  may  he  not, 
reasonably  hope  to  be  cast  away  upon  a 
desert  island,  or  turned  to  such  diminutive 
proportions  that  he  can  live  on  equal  terms 
with  his  lead  soldiery,  and  go  a  cruise  in  his 
own  toy  schooner  ?  Surely  all  these  are 
practical  questions  to  a  neophyte  entering 
upon  life  with  a  view  to  play.  Precision 
upon  such  a  point,  the  child  can  understand. 
But  if  you  merely  ask  him  of  his  past 
behaviour,  as  to  who  threw  such  a  stone,  for 
instance,  or  struck  such  and  such  a  match ; 
or  whether  he  had  looked  into  a  parcel  or 
gone  by  a  lorbidden  path, — why,  he  can  see 
no  moment  in  the  inquiry,  and  it  is  ten  to 
one,  he  has  already  halt  forgotten  and  half 
bemused  himself  with  subsequent  imaginings. 
It  would  be  easy  to  leave  them  in  their 
native  cloudland,  where  they  figure  so  prettily 


244  ChilcTs  Play 

— pretty  like  flowers  and  innocent  like  dogs. 
They  will  come  out  of  their  gardens  soon 
enough,  and  have  to  go  into  offices  and  the 
witness-box.  Spare  them  yet  a  while,  O 
conscientious  parent !  Let  them  doze  among 
their  playthings  yet  a  little  !  for  who  knows 
what  a  rough,  warfaring  existence  lies  before 
them  in  the  future? 


WALKING   TOURS 

TT  must  not  be  imagined  tliat  a  walking 
tour,  as  some  would  have  us  fancy,  is 
merely  a  better  or  worse  way  of  seeing  the 
country.  There  are  many  ways  gf  seeing 
landscape  quite  as  good  ;  and  none  more 
vivid,  in  spite  of  canting  dilettantes,  than 
from  a  railway  train.  But  landscape  on  a 
walking  tour  is  quite  accessory.  He  who  is 
indeed  of  the  brotherhood  does  not  voyage 
in  quest  of  the  picturesque,  but  of  oertain 
jolly  humours — of  the  hope  and  spirit  with 
which  the  march  begins  at  morning,  and  the 
peace  and  spiritual  repletion  of  the  evening's 
rest.  He  cannot  tell  whether  he  puts  his 
knapsack  on,  or  takes  it  off,  with  more 
delight.  The  excitement  of  the  departure 
puts    him    in    key    for   that   of   the  arrival 


246     .  Walking  Totcrs 

Whatever  he  does  is  not  only  a  reward  in 
itself,  but  will  be  further  rewarded  in  the 
sequel  ;  and  so  pleasure  leads  on  to  pleasure 
in  an  endless  chain.  It  is  this  that  so  few 
can  understand  ;  they  will  either  be  always 
lounging  or  always  at  five  miles  an  hour ; 
they  do  not  play  off  the  one  against  the 
other,  prepare  all  day  for  the  evening,  and 
all  evening  for  the  next  day.  And,  above 
all,  it  is  here  that  your  overwalker  fails  of 
comprehension.  His  heart  rises  against  those 
who  drink  their  curagoa  in  liqueur  glasses, 
when  he  himself  can  swill  it  in  a  brown  John. 
He  will  not  believe  that  the  flavour  is  more 
delicate  in  the  smaller  dose.  He  will  not 
believe  that  to  walk  this  unconscionable 
distance  is  merely  to  stupefy  and  brutalfse 
himself,  and  come  to  his  inn,  at  night,  with  a 
sort  of  frost  on  his  five  wits,  and  a  starless 
night  of  darkness  in  his  spirit.  Not  for  him 
the  mild  luminous  evening  of  the  temperate 
walker  !  He  has  nothing  left  of  man  but  a 
physical  need  for  bedtime  and  a  double 
nightcap ;  and    even    his    pipe,  if   he    be   a 


Walking  Tours  247 

smoker,  will  be  savourless  and  disenchanted 
It  is  the  fate  of  such  an  one  to  take  twice  as 
much  trouble  as  is  needed  to  obtain  happi- 
ness, and  miss  the  happiness  in  the  end  ;  he 
is  the  man  of  the  proverb,  in  short,  who  goes 
further  and  fares  worse. 

Now,  to  be  properly  enjoyed,  a  walking 
tour  should  be  gone  upon  alone.  If  you  go 
in  a  company,  or  even  in  pairs,  it  is  no  longer 
a  walking  tour  in  anything  but  name  ;  it  is 
something  else  and  more  in  the  nature  of  a 
picnic.  A  walking  tour  should  be  gone  upon 
alone,  because  freedom  is  of  the  essence ; 
because  you  should  be  able  to  stop  and  go 
on,  and  follow  this  way  or  that,  as  the  freak 
takes  you(;_and  because  you  must  have  your 
own  pace,  and  neither  trot  alongside  a 
champion  walker,  nor  mince  in  time  with  a 
girl.  "?And  then  you  must  be  open  to  all 
impressions  and  let  your  thoughts  take  colour 
from  what  you  see.  You  should  be  as  a 
pipe  for  any  wind  to  play  upon.  "  I  cannot 
see  ths  wit,"  says  Hazlitt,  "of  walking  and 
talking  at  the  same  time.     When   I  am  in 


248  Walking  Tours 

the  country  I  wish  to  vegetate  like  the 
country," — which  is  the  gist  of  all  that  can 
be  said  upon  the  matter.  There  should  be 
no  cackle  of  voices  at  your  elbow,  to  jar  on 
the  meditative  silence  of  the  morning.  And 
so  long  as  a  man  is  reasoning  he  cannot 
surrender  himself  to  that  fine  intoxication 
that  comes  of  much  motion  in  the  open  air, 
that  begins  in  a  sort  of  dazzle  and  sluggish- 
ness of  the  brain,  and  ends  in  a  peace  that 
passes  comprehension. 

During  the  first  day  or  so  of  any  tour 
there  are  moments  of  bitterness,  when  the 
traveller  feels  more  than  coldly  towards  his 
knapsack,  when  he  is  half  in  a  mind  to  throw 
it  bodily  over  the  hedge  and,  like  Christian 
on  a  similar  occasion,  "  give  three  leaps  and 
go  on  singing."  And  yet  it  soon  acquires  a 
property  of  easiness.  It  becomes  magnetic  ; 
the  spirit  of  the  journey  enters  into  it.  And 
no  sooner  have  you  passed  the  straps  over 
your  shoulder  than  the  lees  of  sleep  are 
cleared  from  you,  you  pull  yourself  together 
with   a   shake,  and    fall    at   once   into   you/ 


Walking  Tours  249 

stride.  And  surely,  of  all  possible  moods, 
this,  in  which  a  man  takes  the  road,  is  the 
best  Of  course,  if  he  will  keep  thinking  o.f 
his  anxieties,  if  he  will  open  the  merchant 
Abudah's  chest  and  walk  arm-in-arm  with 
the  hag — why,  wherever  he  is,  and  whether 
he  walk  fast  or  slow,  the  chances  are  that  he 
will  not  be  happy.  And  so  much  the  more 
shame  to  himself!  There  are  perhaps  thirty 
men  setting  forth  at  that  same  hour,  and  I 
would  lay  a  large  wager  there  is  not  another 
dull  face  among  the  ^thirty.  It  would  be  a 
fine  thing  to  follow,  in  a  coat  of  darkness^ 
one  after  another  of  these  wayfarers,  some 
summer  morning,  for  the  first  few  miles  upon 
the  road.  This  one,  who  walks  fast,  with  a 
keen  look  in  his  eyes,  is  all  concentrated  in 
his  own  mind  ;  he  is  up  at  his  loom,  weaving 
and  weaving,  to  set  the  landscape  to  words. 
This  one  peers  about,  as  he  goes,  among  the 
grasses  ;  he  waits  by  the  canal  to  watch  the 
dragon-flies ;  he  leans  on  the  gate  of  the 
pasture,  and  cannot  look  enough  upon  the 
complacent  kine.     And  here  comes  another, 


/ 

/ 


250  Walking  Tours 

talking,  laughing,  and  gesticulating  to  himsell 
His  face  changes  from  time  to  time,  aa 
indignation  flashes  from  his  eyes  or  anger 
clouds  his  forehead.  He  is  composing 
articles,  delivering  orations,  and  conducting 
the  most  impassioned  interviews,  by  the 
way.  A  little  farther  on,  and  it  is  as  like  as 
not  he  will  begin  to  sing.  And  well  for 
him,  supposing  him  to  be  no  great  master  in 
that  art,  if  he  stumble  across  no  stolid  peasant 
at  a  corner ;  for  on  such  an  occasion,  I 
scarcely  know  which  is  the  more  troubled,  or 
whether  it  is  worse  to  suffer  the  confusion  of 
your  troubadour,  or  the  unfeigned  alarm  of 
your  clown.  A  sedentary  population,  accus- 
tomed, besides,  to  the  strange  mechanical 
bearing  of  the  common  tramp,  can  in  no 
wise  explain  to  itself  the  gaiety  of  these 
passers-by.  I  knew  one  man  who  was 
arrested  as  a  runaway  lunatic,  because,  al- 
though a  full-grown  person  with  a  red  beard, 
he  skipped  as  he  went  like  a  child.  And 
you  would  be  astonished  if  I  were  to  tell  you 
all  the  grave  and   learned   heads  who  have 


Walking  Tours  251 

confessed  to  me  that,  when  on  walking  tours, 
they  sang — and  sang  very  ill — and  had  a 
pair  of  red  ears  when,  as  described  above,  the 
inauspicious  peasant  plumped  into  their  arms 
from  round  a  corner.  And  here,  lest  you 
should  think  I  am  exaggerating,  is  Hazlitt's 
own  confession,  from  his  essay  On  Gomg  a 
Journey,  which  is  so  good  that  there  should 
be  a  tax  levied  on  all  who  have  not  read 
it:— 

"  Give  me  the  clear  blue  sky  over  my 
head,"  says  he,  "  and  the  green  turf  beneath 
my  feet,  a  winding  road  before  me,  and  a 
three  hours'  march  to  dinner — and  then  to 
thinking !  It  is  hard  if  I  cannot  start  some 
game  on  these  lone  heaths.  I  laugh,  I  run 
I  leap,  I  sing  for  joy." 

Bravo  !  After  that  adventure  of  my  friend 
with  the  policeman,  you  would  not  have 
cared,  would  you,  to  publish  that  in  the  first 
person  ?  But  we  have  no  bravery  nowadays, 
and,  even  in  books,  must  all  pretend  to  be  as 
dull  and  foolish  as  our  neighbours.  It  was 
not  so  with  Hazlitt.     And  notice  how  learn«j 


J 


252  Walking  Tours 

he  is  (as,  indeed,  throughout  the  essay)  in 
the  theory  of  walking  tours.  He  is  none  of 
your  athletic  men  in  purple  stockings,  who 
walk  their  fifty  miles  a  day :  three  hours' 
march  is  his  ideal.  And  then  he  must  have 
a  winding  road,  the  epicure ! 

Yet  there  is  one  thing  I  object  to  in  these 
words  of  his,  one  thing  in  the  great  master's 
practice  that  seems  to  me  not  wholly  wise. 
I  do  not  approve  of  that  leaping  and  running. 
Both  of  these  hurry  the  respiration  ;  they 
both  shake  up  the  brain  out  of  its  glorious 
open-air  confusion  ;  and  they  both  break  the 
pace.  Uneven  walking  is  not  so  agreeable 
to  the  body,  and  it  distracts  and  irritates  the 
mind,  Whereas,  when  once  you  have  fallen 
into  an  equable  stride,  it  requires  no  conscious 
thought  from  you  to  keep  it  up,  and  yet  it 
prevents  you  from  thinking  earnestly  of 
anything  else.  Like  knitting,  like  the  work 
of  a  copying  clerk,  it  gradually  neutralises 
and  sets  to  sleep  the  serious  activity  of  the 
mind.  We  can  think  of  this  or  that,  lightly 
and   laughingly,  as  a  child  thinks,  or  as  we 


Walkmg  Tours  253 

think  in  a  morning  dose  ;  we  can  make  puns 
or  puzzle  out  acrostics,  and  trifle  in  a  thousand 
ways  with  words  and  rhymes  ;  but  when  it 
comes  to  honest  work,  when  we  come  to 
gather  ourselves  together  for  an  effort,  we 
may  sound  the  trumpet  as  loud  and  long  as 
we  please  ;  the  great  barons  of  the  mind  will 
not  rally  to  the  standard,  but  sit,  each  one, 
at  home,  warming  his  hands  over  his  own 
fire  and  brooding  on  his  own  private  thought ! 
In  the  course  of  a  day's  walk,  you  see, 
there  is  much  variance  in  the  mood.  From 
the  exhilaration  of  the  start,  to  the  happy 
phlegm  of  the  arrival,  the  change  is  certainly 
great.  As  the  day  goes  on,  the  traveller 
moves  from  the  one  extreme  towards  the 
other.  He  becomes  more  and  more  incor- 
porated with  the  material  landscape,  and  the 
open-air  drunkenness  grows  upon  him  with 
great  strides,  until  he  posts  along  the  road, 
and  sees  everything  about  him,  as  in  a  cheer- 
ful dream.  The  first  is  certainly  brighter, 
but  the  second  stage  is  the  more  peaceful 
A  man  does  not  make  so  many  articles  to- 


2  54  Walking  Tours 

wards  the  end,  nor  does  he  laugh  aloud  ;  but 
the  purely  animal  pleasures,  the  senbi  of 
physical  wellbeing,  the  delight  of  every  in- 
halation, of  every  time  the  muscles  tighten 
down  the  thigh,  console  him  for  the  -ibsence 
of  the  others,  and  bring  him  to  his  destination 
still  content. 

Nor   must    I    forget    to   say   a   word    on 

bivouacs.     You  come  to  a   milestone   on   a 

hill,  or  some  place  where   deep  ways  meet 

under  trees  ;  and  off  goes  the  knapsack,  and 

j    down  you  sit  to  smoke  a  pipe  in   the  shade. 

\    You  sink  into  yourself,  and  the  birds  come 

J    round   and  look  at   you  ;    and   your  smoke 

J     dissipates  upon  the  afternoon  under  the  blue 

r^i      dome  of  heaven  ;  and  the  sun  lies  warm  upon 

\     your  feet,  and  the  cool   air  visits  your  neck 

and  turns  aside  your  open  shirt.      If  you  are 

not  happy,  you  must  have  an  evil  conscience. 

You  may  dally  as  long  as  you  like  by  the 

roadside.     It  is  almost  as  if  the  millennium 

were  arrived,  when  we  shall  throw  our  clocks 

and  watches  over  the  housetop,  and  remember 

time  and  seasons  no  more.      Not   to   keep 


Walking  Tours  255 

hours  for  a  lifetime  is,  I  was  going  to  say,  to 
live  for  ever.  You  have  no  idea,  unless  you 
have  tried  it,  how  endlessly  long  is  a  summer's 
day,  that  you  measure  out  only  by  hunger, 
and  bring  to  an  end  only  when  you  are 
drowsy.  I  know  a  village  where  there  are 
hardly  any  clocks,  where  no  one  knows  more 
of  the  days  of  the  week  than  by  a  sort  of 
instinct  for  the  fete  on  Sundays,  and  where 
only  one  person  can  tell  you  the  day  of  the 
month,  and  she  is  generally  wrong  ;  and  if 
people  were  aware  how  slow  Time  journeyed 
in  that  village,  and  what  armfuls  of  spare 
hours  he  gives,  over  and  above  the  bargain, 
to  its  wise  inhabitants,  I  believe  there  would 
be  a  stampede  out  of  London,  Liverpool, 
Paris,  and  a  variety  of  large  towns,  where  the 
clocks  lose  their  heads,  and  shake  the  hours 
out  each  one  faster  than  the  other,  as  though 
they  were  all  in  a  wager.  And  all  these 
foolish  pilgrims  would  each  bring  his  own 
misery  along  with  him,  in  a  watch-pocket! 
It  is  to  be  noticed,  there  were  no  clocks  and 
watches  in  the  much-vaunted  days  before  the 


256  Walking  Tours 

flood.  It  follows,  of  course,  there  were  no 
appointments,  and  punctuality  was  not  yet 
thought  upon.  "  Though  ye  take  from  a 
covetous  man  all  his  treasure,"  says  Milton, 
"  he  has  yet  one  jewel  left ;  ye  cannot  deprive 
him  of  his  covetousness."  And  so  I  would 
say  of  a  modern  man  of  business,  you  may 
do  what  you  will  for  him,  put  him  in  Eden, 
give  him  the  elixir  of  life — he  has  still  a  flaw 
at  heart,  he  still  has  his  business  habits. 
Now,  there  is  no  time  when  business  habits 
are  more  mitigated  than  on  a  walking  tour. 
And  so  during  these  halts,  as  I  say,  you  will 
feel  almost  free. 

But  it  is  at  night,  and  after  dinner,  that 
the  best  hour  comes.  There  are  no  such 
pipes  to  be  smoked  as  those  that  follow  a 
good  day's  march  ;  the  flavour  of  the  tobacco 
is  a  thing  to  be  remembered,  it  is  so  dry  and 
aromatic,  so  full  and  so  fine.  If  you  wind 
up  the  evening  with  grog,  you  will  own  there 
was  never  such  grog  ;  at  every  sip  a  jocund 
tranquillity  spreads  about  your  limbs,  and 
sits  easily  in  your  heart      If  you  read  a  book 


Walking  Tours  257 

—and  you  will  never  do  so  save  by  fits  and 
starts — you  find  the  language  strangely  racy 
and  harmonious;  words  take  a  new  meaning  ; 
single  sentences  possess  the  ear  for  half  an 
hour  together  ;  and  the  writer  endears  him- 
self to  you,  at  every  page,  by  the  nicest 
coincidence  of  sentiment.  It  seems  as  if  it 
were  a  book  you  had  written  yourself  in  a 
dream.  To  all  we  have  read  on  such  occa- 
sions we  look  back  with  special  favour.  "  It 
was  on  the  loth  of  April,  1 798,"  says  Hazlitt, 
with  amorous  precision,  "  that  I  sat  down  to 
a  volume  of  the  new  Hdoise,  at  the  Inn  at 
Llangollen,  over  a  bottle  of  sherry  and  a 
cold  chicken.'  I  should  wish  to  quote  more, 
for  though  we  are  mighty  fine  fellows  nowa- 
days, we  cannot  write  like  Hazlitt.  And, 
talking  of  that,  a  volume  of  Hazlitt's  essays 
would  be  a  capital  pocket-book  on  such  a 
journey ;  so  would  a  volume  of  Heine's 
songs  ;  and  for  Tristrmn  Shandy  I  can  pledge 
a  fair  experience. 

If  the  evening  be  fine  and  warm,  there  is 
nothing  better  in  life  than  to  lounge  before 


258  Walking  Tours 

the  inn  door  in  the  sunset,  or  lean  over  the 
parapet  of  the  bridge,  to  watch  the  weeds 
and  the  quick  fishes.  It  is  then,  if  ever,  that 
you  taste  Joviality  to  the  full  significance  of 
that  audacious  word.  Your  muscles  are  so 
agreeably  slack,  you  feel  so  clean  and  so 
strong  and  so  idle,  that  whether  you  move  or 
sit  still,  whatever  you  do  is  done  with  pride 
and  a  kingly  sort  of  pleasure.  You  fall  in 
talk  with  any  one,  wise  or  foolish,  drunk  or 
sober.  And  it  seems  as  if  a  hot  walk  purged 
you,  more  than  of  anything  else,  of  all 
narrowness  and  pride,  and  left  curiosity  to 
play  its  part  freely,  as  in  a  child  or  a  man  of 
science.  You  lay  aside  all  your  own  hobbies, 
to  watch  provincial  humours  develop  them- 
selves before  you,  now  as  a  laughab'e  farce, 
and  now  grave  and  beautiful  like  an  old 
tale. 

Or  perhaps  you  are  left  to  your  own 
company  for  the  night,  and  surly  weather 
imprisons  you  by  the  fire.  You  may  re- 
member how  Burns,  numbering  past  plea- 
sures, dwell.*'  upon  the  hours  when   he   has 


Walking  Tours  259 

been  "  happy  thinking."  It  is  a  phrase  that 
may  well  perplex  a  poor  modern,  girt  about 
on  every  side  by  clocks  and  chimes,  and 
haunted,  even  at  night,  by  flaming  dial-plates. 
For  we  are  all  so  busy,  and  have  so  many 
far-off  projects  to  realise,  and  castles  in  the 
fire  to  turn  into  solid  habitable  mansions  on 
a  gravel  soil,  that  we  can  find  no  time  for 
pleasure  trips  into  the  Landjof^  Thought  and 
among  the  Hills  of  Vanity.  Changed  times, 
indeed,  when  we  must  sit  all  night,  beside 
the  fire,  with  folded  hands ;  and  a  changed 
world  for  most  of  us,  when  we  find  we  can 
pass  the  hours  without  discontent,  and  be 
happy  thinking.  We  are  in  such  haste  to 
be  doing,  to  be  writing,  to  be  gathering  gear, 
to  make  our  voice  audible  a  moment  in  the 
derisive  silence  of  eternity,  that  we  forget 
that  one  thing,  of  which  these  are  but  the 
parts — namely,  to  live.  We  fall  in  love,  we 
drink  hard,  we  run  to  and  fro  upon  the  earth 
like  frightened  sheep.  And  now  you  are  to 
ask  yourself  if,  when  all  is  done,  you  would 
not  have  been    better  to  sit  by  the  fire  at 


26o  WalkiiifT  Toin\ 


"&> 


home,  and  be  happy  thinking.  To  sit  stiU 
and  contemplate, — to  remember  the  faces  of 
women  without  desire,  to  be  pleased  by  the 
great  deeds  of  men  without  envy,  to  be 
everything  and  everywhere  in  sympathy,  and 
yet  content  to  remain  where  and  what  you 
are — is  not  this  to  know  both  wisdom  and 
virtue,  and  to  dwell  with  happiness  ?  After 
all,  it  is  not  they  who  carry  flags,  but  they 
who  look  upon  it  from  a  private  chamber, 
who  have  the  fun  of  the  procession.  And 
once  you  are  at  that,  you  are  in  the  very 
humour  of  all  social  heresy.  It  is  no  time 
for  shuffling,  or  for  big,  empty  words.  If 
you  ask  yourself  what  you  mean  by  fame, 
riches,  or  learning,  the  answer  is  far  to  seek ; 
and  you  go  back  into  that  kingdom  of  light 
imaginations,  which  seem  so  vain  in  the  eyes 
of  Philistines  perspiring  after  wealth,  and  so 
momentous  to  those  who  are  stricken  with 
the  disproportions  of  the  world,  and,  in  the 
face  of  the  gigantic  stars,  cannot  stop  to  split 
differences  between  two  degrees  of  the  infini- 
tesimally  small,  such  as  a  tobacco  pipe  or 


Walking  Tours  261 

the  Roman  Empire,  a  million  of  money  or  a 
fiddlestick's  end. 

You  lean  from  the  window,  your  last  pipe 
reeking  whitely  into  the  darkness,  your  body 
full  of  delicious  pains,  your  mind  enthroned 
in  the  seventh  circle  of  content ;  when 
suddenly  the  mood  changes,  the  weather- 
cock goes  about,  and  you  ask  yourself  one 
question  more  :  whether,  for  the  interval,  you 
have  been  the  wisest  philosopner  or  the  most 
egregious  of  donkeys  ?  Human  experience 
is  not  yet  able  to  reply  ;  but  at  least  you 
have  had  a  fine  moment,  and  looked  down 
upon  all  the  kingdoms  of  the  earth.  And 
whether  it  was  wise  or  foolish,  to-morrow's 
travel  will  carry  you,  body  and  mind,  into 
some  different  parish  of  the  infinite. 


PAN'S  PIPES 

nPHE  world  in  which  we  h've  has  been 
variously  said  and  sung  by  the  most 
ingenious  poets  and  philosophers  :  these 
reducing  it  to  formulae  and  chemical  in- 
gredients, those  striking  the  lyre  in  high- 
sounding  measures  for  the  handiwork  of 
God.  What  experience  supplies  is  of  a 
mingled  tissue,  and  the  choosing  mind  has 
much  to  reject  before  it  can  get  together 
the  materials  of  a  theory.  Dew  and  thunder, 
destroying  Atilla  and  the  Spring  lambkins, 
belong  to  an  order  of  contrasts  which  no 
repetition  can  assimilate.  There  is  an  un- 
couth, outlandish  strain  throusfhout  the  web 
of  the  world,  as  from  a  vexatious  planet  in 
the  house  of  life.  Things  are  not  congruous 
and  wear  strange  disguises  :  the  consummate 


Paris  Pipes  263 

flower  is  fostered  out  of  dung,  and  after 
nourishing  itself  awhile  with  heaven's  delica.te 
distillations,  decays  again  into  indistinguish- 
able soil  ;  and  with  Caesar's  ashes,  Hamlet 
tells  us,  the  urchins  make  dirt  pies  and 
filthily  besmear  their  countenance.  Nay, 
the  kindly  shine  of  summer,  when  tracked 
home  with  the  scientific  spyglass,  is  found 
to  issue  from  the  most  portentous  nightmare 
of  the  universe — the  great,  conflagrant  sun  : 
a  world  of  hell's  squibs,  tumultuary,  roaring 
aloud,  inimical  to  life.  The  sun  itselt  is 
enough  to  disgust  a  human  being  of  the 
scene  which  he  inhabits  ;  and  you  would  not 
fancy  there  was  a  green  or  habitable  spot  in 
a  universe  thus  awfully  lighted  up.  And  yet 
it  is  by  the  blaze  of  such  a  conflagration,  to 
which  the  fire  of  Rome  was  but  a  spark, 
that  we  do  all  our  fiddling,  and  hold  domestic 
tea-parties  at  the  arbour  door. 

The  Greeks  figured  Pan,  the  god  of  Nature, 
now  terribly  stamping  his  foot,  so  that  armies 
were  dispersed  ;  now  by  the  woodside  on  a 
summer  noon   trolling   on  his  pipe  until   he 


264  Pans  Pipes 

charmed  the  hearts  of  upland  ploughmea 
And  the  Greeks,  in  so  figuring,  uttered  the 
last  word  of  human  experience.  To  certain 
smoke-dried  spirits  matter  and  motion  and 
elastic  aethers,  and  the  hypothesis  of  this  of 
that  other  spectacled  professor,  tell  a  speak- 
ing story ;  but  for  youth  and  all  ductile  and 
congenial  minds.  Pan  is  not  dead,  but  of  all 
the  classic  hierarchy  alone  survives  in  triumph ; 
goat -footed,  with  a  gleeful  and  an  angry 
look,  the  type  of  the  shaggy  world :  and  in 
every  wood,  if  you  go  with  a  spirit  properly 
prepared,  you  shall  hear  the  note  of  his 
pipe. 

/     For  it  is  a  shaggy  world,  and  yet  studded 
/  with  gardens  ;  where  the  salt  and   tumbling 
I  sea  receives  clear  rivers  running  from  among 
I  reeds    and    lilies  ;    fruitful    and    austere ;    a 
/  rustic    world  ;     sunshiny,    lewd,    and     cruel. 
/    What  is  it  the  birds  sing  among  the  trees 
/    in   pairing-time  ?     What   means   the   sound 
of  the  rain    falling   far  and  wide  upon  the 
leafy  forest  ?     To  what  tune  does  the  fisher- 
man whistle,  as  he  hauls  in  his  net  at  morning, 


Pans  Pipes  265 

and  the  bright  fish  are  heaped  inside  the 
boat  ?  These  are  all  airs  upon  Pan's  pipe  ; 
he  it  was  who  gave  them  breath  in  the 
exultation  of  his  heart,  and  gleefully  modu- 
lated their  outflow  with  his  lips  and  fingers. 
The  coarse  mirth  of  herdsmen,  shaking  the 
dells  with  laughter  and  striking  out  high 
echoes  from  the  rock  ;  the  tune  of  moving 
feet  in  the  lamplit  city,  or  on  the  smooth 
ballroom  floor ;  the  hooves  of  many  horses, 
beating  the  wide  pastures  in  alarm  ;  the 
song  of  hurrying  rivers  ;  the  colour  of  clear 
skies ;  and  smiles  and  the  live  touch  of 
hands  ;  and  the  voice  of  things,  and  their 
significant  look,  and  the  renovating  influence 
they  breathe  forth — these  are  his  joyful 
measures,  to  which  the  whole  earth  treads  in 
choral  harmony.  To  this  music  the  young 
lambs  bound  as  to  a  tabor,  and  the  London 
shop-girl  skips  rudely  in  the  dance.  For 
it  puts  a  spirit  of  gladness  in  all  hearts  ; 
and  to  look  on  the  happy  side  of  nature  is 
common,  in  their  hours,  to  all  created  things. 
Some  are  vocal  under  a  good  influence,  are 


266  Pans  Pipes 

pleasing  whenever  they  are  pleased,  and  hand 
on  their  happiness  to  others,  as  a  child  who, 
looking  upon  lovely  things,  looks  lovely. 
Some  leap  to  the  strains  with  unapt  foot, 
and  make  a  halting  figure  in  the  universal 
dance.  And  some,  like  sour  spectators  at 
the  play,  receive  the  music  into  their  hearts 
with  an  unmoved  countenance,  and  walk 
like  strangers  through  the  general  rejoicing. 
But  let  him  feign  never  so  carefully,  there 
is  not  a  man  but  has  his  pulses  shaken  when 
Pan  trolls  out  a  stave  of  ecstasy  and  sets 
the  world  a-singing. 

Alas  if  that  were  all !  But  oftentimes  the 
air  is  changed  ;  and  in  the  screech  of  the 
night  wind,  chasing  navies,  subverting  the 
tall  ships  and  the  rooted  cedar  of  the  hills  ; 
in  the  random  deadly  levin  or  the  fury  of 
headlong  floods,  we  recognise  the  "dread 
foundation  "  of  life  and  the  anger  in  Pan's 
heart  Earth  wages  open  war  against  her 
children,  and  under  her  softest  touch  hides 
treacherous  claws.  The  cool  waters  invite 
us  in  to  drown  ;  the  domestic  hearth  burns 


Pans  Pipes  267 

np  in  the  hour  of  sleep,  and  makes  an  end 
of  alL  Everything  is  good  or  bad,  helpful 
or  deadly,  not  in  itself,  but  by  its  circum- 
stances. For  a  few  bright  days  in  England 
the  hurricane  must  break  forth  and  the 
North  Sea  pay  a  toll  of  populous  ships. 
And  when  the  universal  music  has  led  lovers 
into  the  paths  of  dalliance,  confident  of 
Nature's  sympathy,  suddenly  the  air  shifts 
into  a  minor,  and  death  makes  a  clutch  from 
his  ambuscade  below  the  bed  of  marriage. 
For  death  is  given  in  a  kiss  ;  the  dearest 
kindnesses  are  fatal  ;  and  into  this  life,  where 
one  thing  preys  upon  another,  the  child  too 
often  makes  its  entrance  from  the  mother's 
corpse.  It  is  no  wonder,  with  so  traitorous 
a  scheme  of  things,  if  the  wise  people  who 
created  for  us  the  idea  of  Pan  thought  that 
of  all  fears  the  fear  of  him  was  the  most 
terrible,  since  it  embraces  all.  And  still  we 
preserve  the  phrase :  a  panic  terror.  i^_T2_ 
reckon  dangers  too  curiously,  to  hearken  too 
intently  for  the  threat  that  runs  through  all 
the  winning  music  of  the  world,  to  hold  back 


268  Pan  s  Pipes 

the  hand  from  the  rose  because  of  the  them, 
and  from  life  because  of  death  :  this  it  is  to 
be  afraid  of  Paiv'  Highly  respectable  citizens 
who  flee  life's  pleasures  and  responsibilities 
and  keep,  with  upright  hat,  upon  the  midway 
of  custom,  avoiding  the  right  hand  and  the 
left,  the  ecstasies  and  the  agonies,  how  sur- 
prised they  would  be  if  they  could  hear 
their  attitude  mythologically  expressed,  and 
knew  themselves  as  tooth -chattering  ones, 
who  flee  from  Nature  because  they  fear  the 
hand  of  Nature's  God !  Shrilly  sound  Pan's 
pipes  ;  and  behold  the  banker  instantly 
concealed  in  the  bank  parlour!  For  to 
distrust  one's  impulses  is  to  be  recreant  to 
Pan. 

There  are  moments  when  the  mind  refuses 
to  be  satisfied  with  evolution,  and  demands 
a  ruddier  presentation  of  the  sum  of  man's 
experience.  Sometimes  the  mood  is  brought 
about 'by  laughter  at  the  humorous  side  of 
life,  as  when,  abstracting  ourselves  from 
earth,  we  imagine  people  plodding  on  foot^ 
or  seated  in  ships  and  speedy  trains,  with  the 


Pan  s  Pipes  269 

planet  all  the  while  whirling  in  the  opposite 
direction,  so  that,  for  all  their  hurry,  they 
travel  back-foremost  through  the  universe  of 
space.  Sometimes  it  comes  by  the  spirit  of 
delight,  and  sometimes  by  the  spirit  of  terror. 
At  least,  there  will  always  be  hours  when 
we  refuse  to  be  put  off  by  the  feint  of 
explanation,  nicknamed  science;  and  demand 
instead  some  palpitating  image  of  our  estate, 
that  shall  represent  the  troubled  and  un- 
certain element  in  which  we  dwell,  and 
satisfy  reason  by  the  means  of  art.  Science 
writes  of  the  world  as  if  with  the  cold  finger 
of  a  starfish  ;  it  is  all  true ;  but  what  is  it 
when  compared  to  the  reality  of  which  it 
discourses  ?  where  hearts  beat  high  in  April, 
and  death  strikes,  and  hills  totter  in  the 
earthquake,  and  there  is  a  glamour  over  all 
the  objects  of  sight,  and  a  thrill  in  all  noises 
for  the  ear,  and  Romance  herself  has  made 
her  dwelling  among  men  ?  So  we  come 
back  to  the  old  myth,  and  hear  the  goat- 
footed  piper  making  the  music  which  is  itself 
the  charm  and  terror  of  things  ;  and   when 


z^o  Pans  Pipes 

a  glen  invites  our  visiting  footsteps,  fancy 
that  Pan  leads  us  thither  with  a  gracious 
tremolo  ;  or  when  our  hearts  quail  at  the 
thunder  of  the  cataract,  tell  ourselves  that 
he  has  stamped  his  hoof  in  the  nigh  thicket 


A  PLEA  FOR  GAS  LAMPS 

/^^ITIES  given,  the  problem  was  to  light 
them.  How  to  conduct '  individual 
citizens  about  the  burgess-warren,  when  once 
heaven  had  withdrawn  its  leading  luminary? 
or — since  we  live  in  a  scientific  age — when 
once  our  spinning  planet  has  turned  its  back 
upon  the  sun  ?  The  moon,  from  time  to 
time,  was  doubtless  very  helpful ;  the  stars 
had  a  cheery  look  among  the  chimney-pots  ; 
and  a  cresset  here  and  there,  on  church  or 
citadel,  produced  a  fine  pictorial  effect,  and, 
in  places  where  the  ground  lay  unevenly,  held 
out  the  right  hand  of  conduct  to  the  benighted. 
But  sun,  moon,  and  stars  abstracted  or  con- 
cealed, the  night -faring  inhabitant  had  to 
fall  back — we  speak  on  the  authority  of  old 
prints — upon  stable  lanthoms,  two  stories  in 


272         A  Plea  for  Gas  Lamps 

height.  Many  holes,  drilled  in  the  conical 
turret-roof  of  this  vagabond  Pharos,  let  up 
spouts  of  dazzlement  into  the  bearer's  eyes  ; 
and  as  he  paced  forth  in  the  ghostly  dark- 
ness, carrying  his  own  sun  by  a  ring  about 
his  finger,  day  and  night  swung  to  and  fro 
and  up  and  down  about  his  footsteps. 
Blackness  haunted  his  path  ;  he  was  be- 
leaguered by  goblins  as  he  went ;  and,  curfew 
being  struck,  he  found  no  light  but  that  he 
travelled  in  throughout  the  township. 

Closely  following  on  this  epoch  of  migra- 
tory lanthorns  in  a  world  of  extinction,  came 
the  era  of  oil-lights,  hard  to  kindle,  easy  to 
extinguish,  pale  and  wavering  in  the  hour  ot 
their  endurance.  Kudely  puffed  the  winds 
of  heaven  ;  roguishly  clomb  up  the  all-de- 
structive urchin  ;  and,  lo  !  in  a  moment  night 
re-established  her  void  empire,  and  the  cit 
groped  along  the  wall,  suppered  but  bedless, 
occult  from  guidance,  and  sorrily  wading  in 
the  kennels.  As  if  gamesome  winds  and 
gamesome  youths  were  not  sufficient,  it  was 
the  habit  to   sling   these    feeble   luminaries 


A  Pica  for  Gas  Lamps         273 

from  house  to  house  above  the  fairway. 
There,  on  invisible  cordage,  let  them  swing ! 
And  suppose  some  crane-necked  general  to 
go  speeding  by  on  a  tall  charger,  spurring  the 
destiny  of  nations,  red-hot  in  expedition, 
there  would  indubitably  be  some  effusion  of 
military  blood,  and  oaths,  and  a  certain  crash 
of  glass  ;  and  while  the  chieftain  rode  for- 
ward with  a  purple  coxcomb,  the  street 
would  be  left  to  original  darkness,  unpiloted, 
unvoyageable,  a  province  of  the  desert  night. 
The  conservative,  looking  before  and  after, 
draws  from  each  contemplation  the  matter 
for  content.  Out  of  the  age  of  gas  lamps 
he  glances  back  slightingly  at  the  mirk  and 
glimmer  in  which  his  ancestors  wandered  ; 
his  heart  waxes  jocund  at  the  contrast ;  nor 
do  his  lips  refrain  from  a  stave,  in  the  highest 
style  of  poetry,  lauding  progress  and  the 
golden  mean.  When  gas  first  spread  along 
a  city,  mapping  it  forth  about  evenfall  for 
the  eye  of  observant  birds,  a  new  age  had 
begun  for  sociality  and  corporate  pleasure- 
seeking,  and  begun  with  proper  circumstance, 


274         -^  Plea  for  Gas  Lamps 

becoming  its  own  birthright.  The  wor'A  of 
Prometheus  had  advanced  by  another  stride. 
Mankind  and  its  supper  parties  were  no 
longer  at  the  mercy  of  a  few  miles  of  sea- 
fog  ;  sundown  no  longer  emptied  the  pro- 
menade ;  and  the  day  was  lengthened  out  to 
every  man's  fancy.  The  city-folk  had  stars 
of  their  own  ;  biddable,  domesticated  stars. 

It  is  true  that  these  were  not  so  steady, 
nor  yet  so  clear,  as  their  originals  ;  nor  indeed 
was  their  lustre  so  elegant  as  that  of  the  best 
wax  candles.  But  then  the  gas  stars,  being 
nearer  at  hand,  were  more  practically  effica- 
cious than  Jupiter  himself.  It  is  true,  again, 
that  they  did  not  unfold  their  rays  with  the 
appropriate  spontaneity  of  the  planets,  coming 
out  along  the  firmament  one  after  another, 
as  the  need  arises.  But  the  lamplighters 
took  to  their  heels  every  evening,  and  ran 
with  a  good  heart.  It  was  pretty  to  see 
man  thus  emulating  the  punctuality  of 
heaven's  orbs ;  and  though  perfection  was 
not  absolutely  reached,  and  now  and  then  an 
individual  may  have  been   knocked  on  the 


A  Plea  for  Gas  Lamps         275 

head  by  the  ladder  of  the  flying  functionary, 
yet  people  commended  his  zeal  in  a  proverb, 
and  taught  their  children  to  say,  "  God  bless 
the  lamplighter !"  And  since  his  passage 
Vt^as  a  piece  of  the  day's  programme,  the 
children  were  well  pleased  to  repeat  the 
benediction,  not,  of  course,  in  so  many 
words,  which  would  have  been  improper,  but 
in  some  chaste  circumlocution,  suitable  for 
infant  lips. 

God  bless  him,  indeed  !  For  the  term  of 
his  twilight  diligence  is  near  at  hand  ;  and 
for  not  much  longer  shall  we  watch  him 
speeding  up  the  street  and,  at  measured 
intervals,  knocking  another  luminous  hole 
into  the  dusk.  The  Greeks  would  have 
made  a  noble  myth  of  such  an  one  ;  how  he 
distributed  starlight,  and,  as  soon  as  the 
need  was  over,  re-collected  it ;  and  the  little 
bull's-eye,  which  was  his  instrument,  and 
held  enough  fire  to  kindle  a  whole  parish, 
would  have  been  fitly  commemorated  in  the 
legend.  Now,  like  all  heroic  tasks,  his 
labours  draw  towards  apotheosis,  and  in  the 


276         A  Plea  for  Gas  Lamps 

light  of  victory  himself  shall  disappear.  Fof 
another  advance  has  been  effected.  Ouf 
tame  stars  are  to  come  out  in  future,  not 
one  by  one,  but  all  in  a  body  and  at  once. 
A  sedate  electrician  somewhere  in  a  back 
office  touches  a  spring — and  behold  !  from 
one  end  to  another  of  the  city,  from  east  to 
west,  from  the  Alexandra  to  the  Crystal 
Palace,  there  is  light !  Fiat  Lux,  says  the 
sedate  electrician.  What  a  spectacle,  on 
some  clear,  dark  nightfall,  from  the  edge  of 
Hampstead  Hill,  when  in  a  moment,  in  the 
twinkling  of  an  eye,  the  design  of  the 
monstrous  city  flashes  into  vision — a  glitter- 
ing hieroglyph  many  square  miles  in  extent ; 
and  when,  to  borrow  and  debase  an  image, 
all  the  evening  street-lamps  burst  together 
into  song  I  Such  is  the  spectacle  of  the 
future,  preluded  the  other  day  by  the  experi- 
ment in  Pall  Mall.  Star-rise  by  electricity, 
the  most  romantic  flight  of  civilisation  ;  the 
compensatory  benefit  for  an  innumerable 
array  of  factories  and  bankers'  clerks.  To 
the  artistic  spirit  exercised  about  Thirlmere, 


A  Plea  for  Gas  Lamps         277 

here  is  a  crumb  of  consolation  ;  consolatory, 
at  least,  to  such  of  them  as  look  out  upon 
the  world  through  seeing  eyes,  and  con- 
tentedly accept  beauty  where  it  comes. 

But  the  conservative,  while  lauding  pro- 
gress, is  ever  timid  of  innovation  ;  his  is  the 
hand  upheld  to  counsel  pause ;  his  is  the 
signal  advising  slow  advance.  The  word 
electricity  now  sounds  the  note  of  danger. 
In  Paris,  at  the  mouth  of  the  Passage  des 
Princes,  in  the  place  before  the  Opera  portico, 
and  in  the  Rue  Drouot  at  the  Figaro  office, 
a  new  sort  of  urban  star  now  shines  out 
nightly,  horrible,  unearthly,  obnoxious  to  the 
human  eye  ;  a  lamp  for  a  nightmare  !  Such 
a  light  as  this  should  shine  only  on  murders 
and  public  crime,  or  along  the  corridors  of 
lunatic  asylums,  a  horror  to  heighten  horror. 
To  look  at  it  only  once  is  to  fall  in  love 
with  gas,  which  gives  a  warm  domestic 
radiance  fit  to  eat  by.  Mankind,  you  would 
have  thought,  might  have  remained  content 
with  what  Prometheus  stole  for  them  and 
not  gone  fishing  the  profound  heaven  with 


/ 


278         A  Plea  for  Gas  Lamps 

kites  to  catch  and  domesticate  the  wildfirt 
of  the  storm.  Yet  here  we  have  the  levin 
brand  at  our  doors,  and  it  is  proposed  that 
we  should  henceforward  take  our  walks 
abroad  in  the  glare  of  permanent  lightning. 
A  man  need  not  be  very  superstitious  if  he 
scruple  to  follow  his  pleasures  by  the  light  ol 
the  Terror  that  Flieth,  nor  very  epicurean  if 
he  prefer  to  see  the  face  of  beauty  more 
becomingly  displayed.  That  ugly  blinding 
glare  may  not  improperly  advertise  the 
home  of  slanderous  Figaro^  which  is  a  back- 
shop  to  the  infernal  regions  j  but  where  soft 
joys  prevail,  where  people  are  convoked  to 
pleasure  and  the  philosopher  locks  on  smiling 
and  silent,  where  love  and  laughter  and 
deifying  wine  abound,  there,  at  least,  let  the 
old  mild  lustre  shine  upon  the  ways  of  man. 


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